Lectures on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by the religion of the ancient Babylonians

THE HIBBERT LECTURES,

1887.

THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1887.

LECTURES

OX v THE

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE RELIGION OF THE

ANCIENT BABYLONIANS.

BY

.i_\_ct

A. H-. SAYOE,

FELLOW AND LATE SENIOR TUTOR OF QUEEN'S COLL., AND DEPUTY-PROFESSOR OF
COMPARATIA'E PHILOLOGY, OXFORD; HON. LL.D. DUBLIN.

SECOND EDITION.

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,

14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.

1888.
[A U Rights reserved.}

IG2.0
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LONDON !

PRINTEP BY 0. QUEEN AND BON,
178, STUAND.

PKEFACE.

A WORD of apology is needed for the numerous repetitions
in the following chapters, which are due to the fact that the
chapters were written and delivered in the form of Lectures.

I cannot guarantee the exactness of every word in the trans
lations of the cuneiform texts given in them. The meaning of
individual words may at times be more precisely defined by the
discovery of fuller materials, even where it has been supposed
that their signification has been fixed with certainty. The same
fate has befallen the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures,
and is still more likely to befall a progressive study like
Assyrian.

How rapidly progressive the latter is, may be gathered from
the number of contributions to our knowledge of Babylonian
religion made since the following Lectures were in the hands of
the printer. Prof. Tiele, in a Paper entitled, "De Beteekenis
van Ea en zijn Verhouding tot Maruduk en Nabu," has tried to
show that Ea was originally connected with the fire ; Mr. Pinches
has published a late Babylonian text in the Babylonian Record,
from which it appears that the esrd, or " tithe," was paid to the
temple of the Sun-god not only by individuals, but also by
towns; and Dr. Jensen, in the ZeitscJirift fur Assyriologie (ii. 1),
has made it probable that the azkaru of the hymn translated on
pp. 68, 69, was the feast of the new moon.

VI PREFACE.

Certain abbreviations are used in the following pages. W.A.I.
means the five volumes of The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western
Asia, published by the Trustees of the British Museum ; D. P.
denotes "determinative prefix;" and the letters D.T., R, M.,
S. and K, refer to tablets marked accordingly in the British
Museum. "Unnumbered" texts mean tablets which had not
been catalogued at the time when I copied them. Words
written in capitals denote ideographs whose true pronunciation
is unknown.

A. H. SAYCE.

QUEEN'S COLL., OXFORD,
June 4th, 1887.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.

PAGE

Difficulties of the subject— Character and age of the materials —Modifi
cation of earlier views — Rise of Semitic culture in the court of Saigon
of Accad, B.C. 3700 — His conquest of Cyprus — Intercourse with
Egypt — Earlier culture of pre-Semitic Chaldsea— Connection between
Babylonian and Hebrew religion — Two periods of Babylonian influ
ence upon the Jews — Origin of the names of Moses, Joseph, Saul,
David and Solomon — Resemblances between the Babylonian and
Jewish priesthood and ritual — Babylonian temples and sabbaths —
Human sacrifice — Unclean meats 1

LECTURE II.
BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON.

Cyrus a worshipper of Bel-Merodach — View of the priesthood about
his conquest — Merodach the supreme Bel or Baal of Babylon — Com
parison between him and Yahveh — Babylonian religion characterised
by localisation — Temple of Bel — Doctrine of the resurrection —
Merodach originally the Sun-god of Eridu — Nebo the divine prophet
of Borsippa — Assur of Assyria — His origin — His resemblance to
Yahveh of Israel ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 85

LECTURE III.
THE GODS OF BABYLONIA.

General character of Babylonian religion — Ea the Culture-god — The
pre-Semitic monuments of Tel-loh (B.C. 4000)— Early trade with
India — Ea as god of the sea — The pre-Semitic deities creators, the
Semitic deities fathers — Two centres of Babylonian culture, Eridu
on the coast and Nipur in the north— Mul-lil, "the lord of the
ghost-world," the god of Nipur— Mul-lil the older Bel, confused with
Merodach the younger Bel— Other gods : Adar, the Moon- god, the
Sun-god, &c.— The Moon-god of Harran— The goddesses of Semitic
Babylonia mere reflections of the male deities — Anu, Nergal, and the
Air-god— Rimmon and Hadad— Doctrine of the origin of evil— The
seven wicked spirits ... .130

Vlll CONTENTS.

LECTURE IV.
TAMMUZ AND ISTAR ; PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM.

The descent of Istar into Hades — Tammuz- Adonis the slain Sun-god —
Originally of pre-Semitic Eridu — The world-tree — The tree of life
and the tree of knowledge — The amours of Istar — Istar, primitively
the goddess of the earth, identified with the evening-star — In the
west, as Ashtoreth, identified with the moon — Of pre-Semitic origin
— The orgies of Istar- worship — The purer side of her worship — Istar
the Artemis and Aphrodite of the Greeks — Answers of the oracle of
Istar to Esar-haddon — The dream of Assur-bani-pal— The Semitic
gods of human form, the pre-Semitic of animal form — Early Chaldsean
totems — The serpent — The Babylonian Prometheus and his trans
formation into a bird — " The voice of the Lord" — The power of the
name — Excommunication: the Chaldsean fate — The Plague-god —
The angel of destruction seen by David ... ... ... ... 221

LECTURE V.
THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD.EA.

The Chaldsean Rig- Veda — The magical texts — The penitential psalms —
The hymns to the Sun-god of Sippara — Relative ages of the collec
tions — The service-books of the temples — Accadian the sacred lan
guage of the Semitic Babylonian priesthood — Shamanism — Gradual
evolution of the gods — Creation of the state-religion and the hierarchy
of the gods — Degradation of the spirits of the earlier faith — Con
sciousness of sin — Views of the future state — The mountain of the
world — Hades and heaven 315

LECTURE VI.
COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY.

Babylonian cosmological systems — Tiamat, the dragon of the deep,
personifies chaos and is slain by Merodach — The creation in days —
Anticipations of Darwin — Sabaism and Babylonian astronomy — The
priest becomes an astrologer — Late date of the system — Worship of
rivers and mountains — Babylonian Beth-els and the pillars of the
sun 367

APPENDIX I. ••• 413

II. Mr. G. Smith's Account of the Temple of Bel 437

„ III. The Magical Texts 441

„ IV. Hymns to the Gods 479

„ V. The Penitential Psalms 521

„ VI. Litanies to the Gods 532

INDEX OF WORDS 541

INDEX 545

THE

RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT BABYLONIANS.

LECTURE I.
INTEODUCTOEY.

IT was with considerable diffidence that I accepted the
invitation of the Hibbert Trustees to give a course of
Lectures on the Eeligion of the Ancient Babylonians.
The subject itself is new; the materials for treating it
are still scanty and defective; and the workers in the
field have been few. The religion of the Babylonians
has, it is true, already attracted the attention of "the
Father of Assyriology," Sir Henry Eawlinson, of the
brilliant and gifted Francois Lenormant, of the eminent
Dutch scholar Dr. Tiele, and of Dr. Fritz Hommel, one
of the ablest of the younger band of Assyrian students ;
but no attempt has yet been made to trace its origin and
history in a systematic manner. The attempt, indeed,
is full of difficulty. "We have to build up a fabric out
of broken and half -deciphered texts, out of stray allu
sions and obscure references, out of monuments many
of which are late and still more are of uncertain age.
If, therefore, my account of Babylonian religion may

B

Z LECTURE I.

seem to you incomplete, if I am compelled at times to
break ofi: in my story or to have recourse to conjecture,
I must crave your indulgence and ask you to remember
the difficulties of the task. To open up new ground is
never an easy matter, more especially when the field of
research is vast; and a new discovery may at any
moment overthrow the theories we have formed, or give
a new complexion to received facts.

I may as well confess at the outset that had I known
all the difficulties I was about to meet with, I should never
have had the courage to face them. It was not until I
was committed beyond the power of withdrawal that I
began fully to realise how great they were. Unlike
those who have addressed you before in this place, I
have had to work upon materials at once deficient and
fragmentary. Mine has not been the pleasant labour of
marshalling well-ascertained facts in order, or of select
ing and arranging masses of material, the very abundance
of which has alone caused embarrassment. On the con
trary, I have had to make most of my bricks without
straw. Here and there, indeed, parts of the subject have
been lighted up in a way that left little to be desired,
but elsewhere I have had to struggle on in thick dark
ness or at most in dim twilight. I have felt as in a
forest where the moon shone at times through open
spaces in the thick foliage, but served only to make the
surrounding gloom still more apparent, and where I
had to search in vain for a clue that would lead me from
one interval of light to another.

The sources of our information about the religion of
the ancient Babylonians and their kinsfolk the Assyrians I
are almost wholly monumental. Beyond a few stray j

INTRODUCTORY. 3

notices in tlie Old Testament, and certain statements
found in classical authors which are for the most part
the offspring of Greek imagination, our knowledge con
cerning it is derived from the long-buried records of
Nineveh and Babylon. It is from the sculptures that
lined the walls of the Assyrian palaces, from the inscrip
tions that ran across them, or from the clay tablets that
were stored within the libraries of the great cities, that
we must collect our materials and deduce our theories.
Tradition is mute, or almost so ; between the old Baby
lonian world and our own a deep gulf yawns, across
which we have to build a bridge by the help of texts
that explorers have disinterred and scholars have pain
fully deciphered. But the study of these texts is one
of no ordinary difficulty. They are written in characters
that were once pictorial, like the hieroglyphs of Egypt,
and were intended to express the sounds of a language
wholly different from that of the Semitic Babylonians
and Assyrians, from whom most of our inscriptions come.
The result of these two facts was two-fold. On the one
hand, every character had more than one value when
used phonetically to denote a syllable; on the other
hand, every character could be employed ideographically
to represent an object or idea. And just as simple ideas
could thus be represented by single characters, so com
pound ideas could be represented by a combination of
characters. In the language of the primitive inhabitants
of Babylonia, the world beyond the grave was known ay
Arali, and was imaged as a dark subterranean region
where the spirits of the dead kept watch over hoards
of unnumbered gold. But the word Arali was not
written phonetically, nor was it denoted by a single

B2

4 LECTURE I.

ideograph; the old Chaldean chose rather to represent
it by three separate characters which would literally
mean "the house of the land of death."

When the Babylonians or Assyrians desired that what
they wrote should be read easily, they adopted devices
which enabled them to overcome the cumbersome obscur
ity of their system of writing. A historical inscription,
for example, may be read with little difficulty; it is
only our ignorance of the signification of particular
words which is likely to cause us trouble in deciphering
its meaning. But when we come to deal with a reli
gious text, the case is altogether different. Eeligion
has always loved to cloak itself in mystery, and a priest
hood is notoriously averse from revealing in plain lan
guage the secrets of which it believes itself the possessor.
To the exoteric world it speaks in parables ; the people
that knoweth not the law is accursed. The priesthood
of Babylonia formed no exception to the general rule.
As we shall see, it was a priesthood at once powerful
and highly organised, the parallel of which can hardly
be found in the ancient world. We need not wonder,
therefore, if a considerable portion of the sacred texts
which it has bequeathed to us were intentionally made
difficult of interpretation ; if the words of which they
consisted were expressed by ideographs rather than writ
ten phonetically; if characters were used with strange
and far-fetched values, and the true pronunciation of
divine names was carefully hidden from the uninitiated
multitude.

But these are not all the difficulties that beset us
when we endeavour to penetrate into the meaning of the
religious texts. I have already said that the cuneiform

INTRODUCTORY. 5

system of writing was not the invention, but the heritage,
of the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians. The Semites
of the historical period, those subjects of Sennacherib
and Nebuchadnezzar who were so closely allied in blood
and language to the Hebrews, were not the first occu
pants of the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. They
had been preceded by a population which in default of
a better name I shall term Accadian or Proto-Chaldean
throughout these Lectures, and which was in no wise
related to them. The Accadians spoke an agglutinative
language, a language, that is to say, which resembled in
its structure the languages of the modern Finns or
Turks, and their physiological features, so far as we can
trace them from the few monuments of the Accadian
epoch that remain, differed very markedly from those of
the Semites. It was to the Accadians that the begin
nings of Chaldean culture and civilisation were due.
They were the teachers and masters of the Semites, not
only in the matter of writing and literature, but in other
elements of culture as well. This is a fact so startling,
so contrary to preconceived ideas, that it was long
refused credence by the leading Orientalists of Europe
who had not occupied themselves with cuneiform studies.
Even to-day there are scholars, and notably one who
has himself achieved success in Assyrian research, who
still refuse to believe that Babylonian civilisation was
originally the creation of a race which has long since
fallen into the rear rank of human progress. But un
less the fact is admitted, it is impossible to explain the
origin either of the cuneiform system of writing or of
that system of theology the outlines of which I have
undertaken to expound.

6 LECTURE I.

Here, then, is one of the difficulties against which the
student of Babylonian religion has to contend. We
have to distinguish the Accadian and the Semitic ele
ments which enter into it, as well as the mixture which
the meeting of these elements brought about. We have
to determine what texts are Accadian, what are Semitic,
what, finally, are due to a syncretic admixture of the two.
What makes the task one of more than ordinary difficulty
is the fact that, like Latin in the Middle Ages, the dead
or dying Accadian became a sacred language among the
Semitic priesthood of a later period. Not only was it
considered necessary to the right performance of the
ritual that genuinely old Accadian texts should be
recited in their original language and with a correct
pronunciation, but new texts were composed in the
extinct idiom of Accad which bore the same linguistic
relation to the older ones as the Latin compositions of
the mediaeval monks bear to the works of the Latin
fathers. Unfortunately, in the present state of our
knowledge, it is sometimes impossible to tell to which of
these two classes of texts a document belongs, and yet
upon the right determination of the question may depend
also the right determination of the development of Baby
lonian religion.

The Accadian element in this religion is productive
of yet another difficulty. As we shall see, a large pro
portion of the deities of the Babylonian faith had their
first origin in the beliefs of the Accadian people. The
names by which they were addressed, however, were
usually written ideographically, not phonetically, after
the fashion of the Accadian scribes, and the reading of
these names is consequently often uncertain. Even if a

INTRODUCTORY. 7

gloss happens to inform us of the correct reading of one
of these names, it by no means follows that we thereby
know how to read its later Semitic equivalent. The
Semites continued to represent the names of the gods by
the same ideographs that had been used by their Acca-
dian predecessors, but in most cases they naturally ga
them a different pronunciation. Even now, when the
study of Assyrian has so far advanced that the Hebrew
lexicographer is able to call in its help in determining
the meaning of Hebrew words, and when an ordinary
historical inscription can be read with almost as much
facility as a page of the Old Testament, we are still
ignorant of the true name of one of the chief Assyrian
divinities. The name of Adar, commonly assigned by
Assyriologists to the Assyrian war-god, has little else
to rest upon except the fact that Adrammelech or "king
Adar" was the divinity in whose honour the men of
Sepharvaim burnt their children in the fire, according
to the second book of Kings (xvii. 3 1).1 And yet the
name is one which not only constantly occurs in the
Assyrian inscriptions, but also enters into the name of
more than one Assyrian king. Can there be a better
illustration of the difficulties which surround the student

1 Lelimann (De Inscriptionibus cuneatis quce pertinent ad Samas-
sum-ukin, p. 47) has made it probable that Adrammelech represents
the goddess Adar-malkat, "Adar the queen," who seems to be identified
with A or Anunit, the goddess "of births" (fame, W. A. I. ii. 57, 14),
and to correspond to the Semitic goddess Erua, " the begetter." In
this case the name of Sennacherib's son, Adrammelech, must be con
sidered to be corrupt. Erua, however, would be an Aramaic and not
a Babylonian form, if it is a Semitic word ; the Babylonian is Eritu,
which is given in K 4195, 6, as a name of Istar. In W. A. I. ii. 54,
60, and S 1720, 2, Era, "the handmaiden" (W. A. I, v. 19, 43), is an
Accadian title of Zarpanit

8 LECTURE I.

of Babylonian religion, as well as of the extent to which
he is deserted by classical tradition ?

As with the name which we provisionally read Adar,
so also is it with the name which we provisionally read
Gisdhubar. Gisdhubar was the hero of the great Chaldean
epic, into the eleventh book of which was woven the
story of the Deluge; he had been the fire-god of the
Accadians before he became the solar hero of Semitic
legend; and there are grounds for thinking that Mr.
George Smith was right in seeing in him the prototype
of the Biblical Mmrod. Nevertheless, the only certain
fact about his name is that it ended in the sound of r.
That it was not Gisdhubar or Izdubar, however, is
almost equally certain. This would be merely the pho
netic reading of the three ideographs which compose the
name, and characters when used as ideographs were
naturally not read phonetically.1

I have not yet finished my enumeration of the diffi
culties and obstacles that meet the inquirer into the
nature and history of Babylonian religion on the very
threshold of his researches. The worst has still to be
mentioned. With the exception of the historical inscrip
tions which adorned the sculptured slabs of the Assyrian

1 Hommel (Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch. Ap. 1866, p. 119) believes that he
has found the true reading of the name, and a proof of its correspond
ence with the Semitic JSTimrod, in W. A. I. iv. 2. 21, 22., 23. 3. 26,
27, where the Semitic Namratsit answers to the name of an Accadian
divinity which may be read Gi-isdu-par-ra or Gis-du-par-ra. But from
S 949, Obv. 6, where the Sun-god is called HI namratsit, it is clear
that namratsit is merely personified difficulty, being the feminine of
the common adjective namratsu, " difficult." The Accadian divinity,
therefore, is the goddess of difficulty, and can have no connection with
a male Fire-god. Her name should probably be read Gi-ib-bir-ra, a
derivative from gib, the Accadian form of gig, " difficult."

INTRODUCTORY. 9

palaces or were inscribed on clay cylinders buried at the
angles of a royal building, our documentary materials con
sist entirely of clay tablets covered with minute characters.
In Assyria, the tablets were baked in the kiln after being
inscribed ; for this purpose holes were made in the clay
to allow the escape of superfluous moisture, and the fear
of fracture prevented the tablets from being of a great
size. In the more southern climate of Babylonia, the
tablets were generally dried in the sun, the result being
the disintegration of the clay in the course of centuries,
the surface of the brick being sometimes reduced to
powder, while at other times the whole brick has been
shivered into atoms. But apart from the records of
" the banking firm" of the Egibi family, which carried on
its business from the time of Nebuchadnezzar and his
predecessors to that of Darius Hystaspis, we possess as
yet comparatively few of the tablets that once stocked
the libraries of Babylonia and must still be lying buried
beneath the ground. The main bulk of our collection
comes from the great library of Nineveh, which occupied
one of the upper rooms in the palace of Assur-bani-pal
at Kouyunjik. It stood within the precincts of the
temple of Nebo,1 and its walls were lined with shelves,
on which were laid the clay books of Assyria or the rolls
of papyrus which have long since perished.2 The library

1 W. A. I. ii. 36, 27 : "I placed (the old tablets and papyri) in the
inner chamber of the temple of Nebo, his lord, which is in Nineveh."
The bit namari, or "observatory," on the contrary, was the "tower"
of the temple of Istar, whose construction and dimensions are described
in an interesting but unfortunately mutilated text (S 1894). Its
breadth, we are told, was 154J cubits.

2 For the papyrus, frequently mentioned in the colophons of Assur-
bani-pal's tablets, under the name of GIS-LI-KHU-SI, or " grass of guid-

10 LECTURE I.

consisted for the most part of copies or editions of older
works that had been brought from Babylonia, and dili
gently copied by numerous scribes, like the " pro verbs of
Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah,
copied out."1 The library had been transferred from
Calah by Sennacherib towards the latter part of his
reign,2 but the larger portion of the collection was got
together by Assur-bani-pal, the son of Esar-haddon, and
the Sardanapallos of the Greeks. He was the first,
indeed we may say the only, Assyrian monarch who
really cared for literature and learning. His predecessors
had been men of war; if they established libraries, it
was only from imitation of their more cultivated neigh
bours in Babylonia, and a desire to remain on good
terms with the powerful classes of scribes and priests.
But Assur-bani-pal, with all his luxury and love of dis
play — or perhaps by reason of it — was a genuine lover
of books. "When rebellion had been quelled in Baby
lonia, and the Babylonian cities had been taken by storm,
the spoil that was most acceptable to the Assyrian king
were the written volumes that their libraries contained.

ing," see my remarks in the Zeitsclirift fur Keilschriftforschung, ii.
3, p. 208. Another ideographic name was Gis-zu, " vegetable of know
ledge" (W.A.I, ii. 36, 11). The Assyrian name was aru, literally
"leaf," E2, iii. Rev. 7. GIS-LI-KHU-SI was pronounced liu or Uvu in
Assyrian, the Hebrew luaJch, of which the Assyrian lavu is another
form.

1 Prov. xxv. 1.

2 Nebo-zuqub-yukin, who was chief librarian from the 6th year of
Sargon (B.C. 716) to the 22nd year of Sennacherib (B.C. 684), does
not seem to have quitted Calah. So far as we know, the first work
written under his direction had been a copy of a text of the standard
work on astrology, " The Illumination of Bel," which had been brought
from Babylon to the library at Calah.

INTRODUCTORY. 11

No present could be sent him which he valued more
than some old text from Erech or Ur or Babylon. But
naturally it was the works which related to Assyria, or
to the special studies of its royal masters, that were most
sought after. The Assyrian cared little for the annalistic
records of the Babylonian kings, or for the myths and
legends which enveloped the childhood of the Babylonian
cities and contained no reference to things Assyrian ; it
was only where the interest of the story extended beyond
the frontiers of Babylonia, or where the religious texts
held a place in the ritual of the Assyrian priesthood,
that it was thought worth while to transport them to a
northern home. If the theology was Assyrian as well
as Babylonian, or if a legend was as popular in Assyria
as it had been in Babylonia, or if, finally, a branch of
study had a special attraction for Assyrian readers,
the works embodying these subjects were transferred
to the library of Nineveh, and there re-edited by the
Assyrian scribes. Hence it is that certain sides of the
old theology are represented so fully in Assyrian litera
ture, while other sides are not represented at all ; hence,
too, it is that the drawers of the British Museum are
filled with tablets on the pseudo-science of omens which
have little save a philological importance attaching to
them.

The library was open, it would seem, to all comers,
and Assur-bani-pal did his utmost to attract "readers"
to the "inspection" and study of the books it contained.
But the literary age of Assyria was short-lived. Even
before Assur-bani-pal died, the mighty empire he had
inherited was tottering to its fall. Egypt had been lost
to it for ever; Babylonia was clamouring for indepen-

12 LECTURE I.

dence ; and the semi-barbarous nations of the north and
east were threatening its borders. Ere the century
closed, Nineveh was taken by its enemies, and its palaces
sacked and destroyed.

The library of Kouyunjik shared in the common over
throw. Its papyri and leathern scrolls were burned
with fire, and its clay books fell in shattered confusion
among the ruins below. There they lay for more than
two thousand years, covered by the friendly dust of de
caying bricks, until Sir A. H. Layard discovered the
old library and revealed its contents to the world of
to-day. His excavations have been followed by those of
Mr. George Smith and Mr. Hormuzd Eassam, and the
greater portion of Assur-bani-pal's library is now in the
British Museum. It is out of its age-worn fragments
that the story I have to tell in this course of Lectures
has been mainly put together.

But the sketch I have given of its history is sufficient
to show how hard such a task must necessarily be. In
the first place, the library of Nineveh was only one of
the many libraries which once existed in the cities of
Assyria and Babylonia. Its founders never aimed at
completeness, or intended to deposit in it more than a
portion of the ancient literature of Babylonia. Then,
further, even this literature was not always copied in
full. From time to time the text is broken off, and the
words " lacuna" or " recent fracture" appear upon the
tablet. The original text, it is clear, was not perfect ;
the tablet which was copied had been injured, and was
thus no longer legible throughout. Such indications,
however, of the faultiness of the ediUo princeps are a
good proof that the Assyrian scribes did their best to

INTRODUCTORY. 13

reproduce it with accuracy, and that if they failed to do
so it was through no fault of their own. But they did
fail sometimes. The Babylonian forms of the cuneiform
characters are often hard to read, and there was no
standard official script in Babylonia such as there was in
Assyria. Education was not in the hands of a single
class, as was the case in the latter country ; most Baby
lonians could read and write, and consequently the forms
of handwriting found upon their monuments are almost
as numerous as in the modern world. Hence it is that
the Assyrian copyist sometimes mistook a Babylonian
character, and represented it by a wrong equivalent.

The most serious result, however, of the fact that the
library of Nineveh mainly consisted of terra-cotta tablets,
broken and scattered in wild confusion when the city was
destroyed, still remains to be told. The larger propor
tion of the texts we have to use are imperfect. Many
of them are made up of small fragments, which have
been pieced together by the patient labour of the As
syrian scholars in the British Museum. In other cases,
only a fragment, not unfrequently a minute fragment,
of a text has been preserved. Often, therefore, we come
across a text which would seem to throw an important
light on some department of Assyrian thought and life
if only we had the clue to its meaning, but the text is
broken just where that clue would have been found.
This fragmentary character of our documents, in fact, is
not only tantalising to the student, but it may be the
cause of serious error. Where we have only fragments
of a text, it is not impossible that we may wholly mis
conceive their relation and meaning, and so build theories
upon them which the discovery of the missing portions

14 LECTURE I.

of the tablet would overthrow. This is especially the
case in the province of religion and mythology, where it
is so easy to put a false construction upon isolated pas
sages, the context of which must be supplied from con
jecture. We know from experience what strange inter
pretations have been imposed upon passages of the Bible
that have been torn from their context ; the student of
Babylonian religion must therefore be forgiven if the
condition in which his materials have reached him should
at times lead him astray. Moreover, it must be remem
bered that the fragmentary condition of our texts makes
the work of the decipherer much harder than it would
otherwise be. A new word or an obscure phrase is often
made perfectly intelligible by the context; but where
this fails us, all interpretation must necessarily be uncer
tain, if not impossible.

There is yet another difficulty connected with our
needful dependence upon the broken tablets of Assur-
bani-paPs library — a difficulty, however, that would not
be felt except by the student of Babylonian religion.
None of the tablets that are derived from it are older
than the eighth century before our era ; how then are
we to determine the relative ages of the various religious
or mythological documents which are embodied in them ?
It is true that we are generally told to what library of
Babylonia the original text belonged, but we look in
vain for any indication of date. And yet an approxi
mately accurate chronology is absolutely indispensable
for a history of religion and religious ideas. If, indeed,
we could explore the Babylonian libraries themselves,
there would be a better chance of our discovering the
relative antiquity of the documents they may still con-

INTRODUCTORY.

15

tain. But at present this is impossible, and except in a
few instances we have to be content with the copies of
the older documents which were made by the Assyrian
scribes.

I am bound to confess that the difficulty is a yery
formidable one. It was not until I had begun to test
the theories hitherto put forward regarding the develop
ment of Babylonian religion, and had tried to see what
could be fairly deduced from the texts themselves, that I
realised how formidable it actually was. There is only
one way of meeting it. It is only by a process of care
ful and cautious induction, by noting every indication of
date, whether linguistic or otherwise, which a text may
offer, by comparing our materials one with another, and
calling in the help of what we have recently learnt about
Babylonian history — above all, by following the method
of nature and science in working from the known to the
unknown — that it is possible to arrive at any conclusions
at all. If, therefore, I shall seem in the course of these
Lectures to speak less positively about the early develop
ment of Babylonian theology than my predecessors in
the same field have done, or than I should have done
myself a few years ago, let it be borne in mind that the
fault lies not in me but in the want of adequate materials.
It is useless to form theories which may be overthrown
at any moment, and which fail to explain all the known
facts.

So far, I fear, I have done little else than lay before
you a dreary catalogue of the difficulties and obstacles
that meet the historian of Babylonian religion at the
very outset of his inquiry. If the picture had no other
Bide, if there were little or nothing to counterbalance

16 LECTURE I.

the difficulties, we might as well admit that the time for
investigating the theological conceptions of the ancient
Babylonians and Assyrians had not yet come, and that
we must be content to leave the subject where it was
left by Sir H. Eawlinson nearly thirty years ago. For
tunately, however, this is not the case. Mutilated and
broken as they are, we still have texts sufficient to
enable us at all events to sketch the outlines of Baby
lonian theology — nay, from time to time to fill them in as
well. The Babylonians were not content with merely
editing their ritual and religious hymns or their myths
about the gods and heroes ; they also compiled commen
taries and explanatory text-books which gave philological
and other information about the older religious literature ;
they drew up lists of the deities and their various titles ;
they described the temples in which their images were
placed, and the relation of the different members of the
divine hierarchy one to another. They even showed an
interest in the gods of other countries, and the names
given by neighbouring nations to divinities which they
identified with their own are at times recorded. It is
true that many of the sacred texts were so written as to
be intelligible only to the initiated; but the initiated
were provided with keys and glosses, many of which are
in our hands. In some respects, therefore, we are better
off than the ordinary Babylonian himself would have
been. "We can penetrate into the real meaning of docu
ments which to him were a sealed book. Nay, more
than this. The researches that have been made during
the last half- century into the creeds and beliefs of the
nations of the world both past and present, have given
us a clue to the interpretation of these documents which

INTRODUCTORY. 17

even the initiated priests did not possess. We can guess
at the origin and primary meaning of rites and cere
monies, of beliefs and myths, which the Babylonians
knew of only in their later form and under their tradi
tional guise. To them, Gisdhubar, the hero of their great
epic, was but a champion and conqueror of old time,
whose deeds were performed on the soil of Babylonia,
and whose history was as real as that of the sovereigns
of their own day. "We, on the contrary, can penetrate
beneath the myths which have grown up around his
name, and can discover in him the lineaments of a solar
hero who was himself but the transformed descendant
of a humbler god of fire.

In spite, however, of the aids that have been provided
for the modern student among the relics of the great
library of Nineveh, his two chief difficulties still remain :
the fragmentary character of his materials and his igno
rance of the true chronology of the larger portion of them.

This last is the most serious difficulty of all, since
recent discoveries have so enlarged our ideas of the anti
quity of Babylonian civilisation, and have so revolu
tionised the views into which we had comfortably settled
down, that our conclusions on the development of Baby
lonian religion must be completely modified. At the risk,
therefore, of making this first Lecture a dull and unin
teresting one, and of seeming to wander from the subject
upon which I have been called to speak, I must enter
into some details as to the early history of the population
among whom the religious system revealed to us by the
cuneiform inscriptions first originated and developed.

Until very lately, Assyrian scholars had fancied that
the rise and early history of Babylonia could be already

c

18 LECTURE I.

traced in its main outlines. By combining the state
ments of classical authors with the data furnished by
such early monuments as we possessed, a consistent
scheme seemed to have been made out. About three
thousand years before our era, it was supposed, the
smaller states which occupied the fertile plain of Baby
lonia were united into a single monarchy, the capital of
which was "Ur of the Chaldees," the modern Mugheir,
on the western side of the Euphrates. The whole country
was at this period under the domination of the Accadians,
though the Semitic nomad and trader were already
beginning to make their appearance. It was divided
into two provinces, the northern called Accad, and the
southern Sumer or Shinar, in which two separate, though
closely allied, dialects were spoken. Now and again,
however, the two provinces were independent of one ano
ther, and there were even times when the smaller states
comprised in them successfully re-asserted their former
freedom. About 2000 B.C., the Accadian was gradually
superseded by the Semite, and before long the Accadian
language itself became extinct, remaining only as the
sacred and learned language of religion and law. The
rise of Semitic supremacy was marked by the reigns oi
Sargon I. and his son Naram-Sin, who established their
seat at Accad, near Sippara, where they founded an
important library, and from whence they led military
expeditions as far westward as the Mediterranean Sea.
The overthrow of Sargon's dynasty, however, was soon
brought about through the conquest of Babylonia by
Khammuragas, a Kosssean from the mountains of Elam. i
He made Babylon for the first time the capital of the |
country, and founded a dynasty whose rule lasted for !

INTRODUCTORY. 19

several centuries. Before the Kosssean conquest, tlie
Babylonian system of religion was already complete.
It emanated from the primitive Accadian population,
though it was afterwards adopted and transformed by
their Semitic successors. It was originally Shamanistic,
like the native religions of the Siberians or Lapps.
The sorcerer took the place of the priest, magical incan
tations the place of a ritual, and innumerable spirits the
place of gods. By degrees, however, these earlier con
ceptions became modified ; a priesthood began to establish
itself; and as a necessary consequence some of the ele
mental spirits were raised to the rank of deities. The
old magical incantations, too, gave way to hymns in
honour of the new gods, among whom the Sun-god was
specially prominent, and these hymns came in time to
form a collection similar to that of the Hindu Big-Veda,
and were accounted equally sacred. This process of
religious development was assisted by the Semitic occu
pation of Babylonia. The Semites brought with them
new theological conceptions. With them the Sun-god,
in his two-fold aspect of benefactor and destroyer, was
the supreme object of worship, all other deities being
resolvable into phases or attributes of the supreme Baal.
At his side stood his female double and reflection, the
goddess of fertility, who was found again under various
names and titles at the side of every other deity. The
union of these Semitic religious conceptions with the
developing creed of Accad produced a state-religion,
watched over and directed by a powerful priesthood,
which continued more or less unaltered down to the
days of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. It was this
state-religion that was carried by the Semitic Assyrians

c 2

20 LECTURE I.

into their home on the banks of the Tigris, where it
underwent one or two modifications, in all essential
respects, however, remaining unchanged.

Now there is much in this neat and self-consistent
account of Babylonian religion which rests on the autho
rity of the cuneiform documents, and about which there
fore there is no room for dispute. But the inferences
which have been drawn from the facts presented by these
cuneiform documents, as well as the general theory by
which the inferences have been compacted together into
a consistent whole, are, it must be remembered, inferences
and theory only. Owing to the fragmentary nature of
the evidence, it has been necessary to supplement the
deficiencies of the record by assumptions for which there
is no documentary testimony whatever. The dates which
form the skeleton, as it were, of the whole theory, have
been derived from Greek and Latin writers. While
certain portions of the scheme have been definitely
acquired by science, since they embody monumental facts,
other portions are destitute of any other foundation than
the combinatory powers of modern scholars. The scheme,
therefore, must be regarded as a mere working hypothesis,
as one of those provisional theories which science is con
stantly compelled to put forward in order to co-ordinate
and combine the facts known at the time, but which
must give way to other hypotheses as new facts are dis
covered which do not harmonise with the older expla
nations. It not unfrequently happens that a hypothesis
which has served its purpose well enough by directing
research into a particular channel, and which after all is
partially correct, may be overthrown by the discovery of
a single new fact. Such has been the fate of the theory

INTRODUCTORY. 21

as to the development of Babylonian religion which I
have been describing above.

The single fact which has shaken it to its very founda
tions is the discovery of the date to which the reign of
Sargon of Accad must be assigned. The last king of
of Babylonia, Nabonidos, had antiquarian tastes, and
busied himself not only with the restoration of the old
temples of his country, but also with the disinterment of
the memorial cylinders which their builders and restorers
had buried beneath their foundations. It was known
that the great temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, where
the mounds of Abu-Habba now mark its remains, had
been originally erected by Naram-Sin the son of Sargon,
and attempts had been already made to find the records
which, it was assumed, he had entombed under its
angles. "With true antiquarian zeal, Nabonidos continued
the search, and did not desist until, like the Dean and
Chapter of some modern cathedral, he had lighted upon
"the foundation-stone" of Naram-Sin himself. This
" foundation-stone," he tells us, had been seen by none
of his predecessors for 3200 years. In the opinion,
accordingly, of Nabonidos, a king who was curious about
the past history of his country, and whose royal position
gave him the best possible opportunities for learning
all that could be known about it, Naram-Sin and his
father Sargon I. lived 3200 years before his own time,
or 3750 B.C.

The date is so remote and so contrary to all our pre
conceived ideas regarding the antiquity of the Babylonian
monarchy, that I may be excused if at first I expressed
doubts as to its accuracy. We are now accustomed to
contemplate with equanimity the long chronology which

22 LECTURE I.

the monuments demand for the history of Pharaonic
Egypt, but we had also been accustomed to regard the
history of Babylonia as beginning at the earliest in the
third millennium before our era. Assyrian scholars had
inherited the chronological prejudices of a former genera
tion, and a starveling chronology seemed to be confirmed
by the statements of Greek writers.

I was, however, soon forced to re-consider the reasons
of my scepticism. The cylinder on which Nabonidos
recounts his discovery of the foundation-stone of Naram-
Sin was brought from the excavations of Mr. Hormuzd
Eassam in Babylonia, and explained by Mr. Pinches six
years ago. Soon afterwards, Mr. Pinches was fortunate
enough to find among some other inscriptions from Baby
lonia fragments of three different lists, in one of which
the kings of Babylonia were arranged in dynasties, and
the number of years each king reigned was stated, as
well as the number of years the several dynasties lasted.
An Assyrian copy of a similar list had been already dis
covered by Mr. George Smith, who, with his usual quick
ness of perception, saw that it must have resembled the
lists from which Berossos, the Greek historian of Chaldasa,
drew the materials of his chronology ; but the copy was
so mere a fragment that the chronological position of the
kings mentioned upon it was a matter of dispute. Hap
pily this is not the case with the principal text published
by Mr. Pinches. It had been compiled by a native of
Babylon, who consequently began with the first dynasty
which made Babylon the capital of the kingdom, and
who seems to have flourished in the time of Nabonidos.
We can check the accuracy of his statements in a some
what curious way. One of the two other texts brought

INTRODUCTORY. 23

to light by Mr. Pinches is a schoolboy's exercise copy of
the first two dynasties mentioned on the annalistic tablet.
There are certain variations between the two texts, how
ever, which show that the schoolboy or his master must
have used some other list of the early kings than that
which was employed by the compiler of the tablet;
nevertheless, the names and the regnal years, with one
exception, agree exactly in each. In Assyria, an accurate
chronology was kept by means of certain officers, the
so-called Eponyms, who were changed every year and
gave their names to the year over which they presided.
We have at present no positive proof that the years were
dated in the same way in Babylonia; but since most
Assyrian institutions were of Babylonian origin, it is
probable that they were. At all events, the scribes of a
later day believed that they had trustworthy chrono
logical evidence extending back into a dim antiquity;
and when we remember the imperishable character of
the clay literature of the country, and the fact that the
British Museum actually contains deeds and other legal
documents dated in the reign of Khammuragas, more
than four thousand years ago, there is no reason why
we should not consider the belief to have been justified.
Now the annalistic tablet takes us back reign by reign,
dynasty by dynasty, to about the year 2400 B.C. Among
the monarchs mentioned upon it is Khammuragas, whose
reign is placed 112 years later (B.C. 2290).1 Of Sargon

1 As the reign of Khammuragas lasted 55 years, its end would have
been about B.C. 2235. This curiously agrees with the date arrived at
(first by von Gutschmidt) for the beginning of the Babylonian era. If
the Latin translation can be trusted (Simplicius, ad Arist. de Ccelo,
503 A), the astronomical observations sent by Kallisthenes from Babylon
to Aristotle in B.C. 331 reached back for 1903 years (i.e. to B.C. 2234).

24 LECTURE I.

and his son Karam-Sin, however, there is no trace. But
this is not all. On the shelves of the British Museum
you may see huge sun-dried bricks, on which are stamped
the names and titles of kings who erected or repaired
the temples where they have been found. In the dynasties
of the annalistic tablet their names are as much absent
as is the name of Sargon. They must have belonged to
an earlier period than that with which the list of the
tablet begins, and have reigned before the time when,
according to the margins of our Bibles, the flood of Noah
was covering the earth, and reducing such bricks as
these to their primaeval slime. But the kings who have
recorded their constructive operations on the bricks are
seldom connected with one another. They are rather
the isolated links of a broken chain, and thus presup
pose a long period of time during which their reigns
must have fallen. This conclusion is verified by another
document, also coming from Babylonia and also first
published by Mr. Pinches. This document contains a
very long catalogue of royal names, not chronologically
arranged, as is expressly stated, but drawn up for a
philological purpose — that of explaining in Assyrian
the Accadian and Kosssean names of the non-Semitic
rulers of Babylonia. Though the document is imperfect,

Berossos, according to Pliny (1ST. H. vii. 57), stated that these observa
tions began at Babylon 490 years before the Greek era of Phoroneus
(B.C. 1753), i.e. B.C. 2243, though Epigenes made it 720 years (B.C.
2473). Babylon, according to Stephanos of Byzantium (s. v.), was
built 1002 years before the date (given by Hellanikos) for the siege of
Troy (B.C. 1229), which would bring us to B.C. 2231, while Ktesias
(ap. Georg. Synk.) made the reign of Belos, or Bel-Merodach of Baby
lon, last for 55 years from B.C. 2286 to 2231. The correspondence of
the reign of the Belos of Ktesias with the reign of Khammuragas is at
least curious.

INTRODUCTORY. 25

it embodies about sixty names which, do not occur on
the annalistic tablet, and must therefore be referred to
an earlier epoch than that with which the latter begins.

But these names, like the majority of those stamped
on the bricks from the ancient temples, are not of Semitic
but of Accadian origin. If, then, the Accadian domina
tion preceded the rule of the Semitic Babylonians, the
long array of sovereigns to whom they belonged must
have reigned before the age of the Semitic rulers of
Accad, Sargon and Naram-Sin. This, however, is a con
clusion from which the historian will needs recoil. The
long space of 1300 years which intervened between the
time of Sargon and that of the dynasty of Khammuragas
cannot have been wholly filled with Semitic princes who
have left no monument behind them. We seem com
pelled to acknowledge that the Semitic rule in Babylonia
was not achieved once for all. The struggle between
the older and younger population of the country was
not determined by a single battle or a single reign. The
dynasty which followed that of Khammuragas bears for
the most part Accadian names, and may therefore be
regarded as marking an Accadian revival. Before the
age of Khammuragas the same event may have often
happened. Now it was a dynasty sprung from a Semitic
settlement that acquired the supremacy in Babylonia;
at other times the ruler of a city which still held out
against the Semite succeeded in establishing his power
over the whole country. In the dynastic tablet the
immediate predecessor of Khammuragas is a Semite
bearing the Semitic name of Sin-muballidh, and yet we
learn from the inscriptions of Khammuragas himself that
he had made himself master of Chaldsea by the overthrow

26 LECTURE I.

of the Accadian prince Eim-Agu. Moreover, whatever
might have been the original character of the Semitic
occupation of Babylonia, from the time of Sargon I.
downwards it was of a more or less peaceable nature;
Accadians and Semites mingled together, and from the
mixture sprang the peculiar civilisation of Babylonia,
and the peculiar type of its people.

Sargon himself was a monarch whom both Accadian
and Semite delighted to honour. Myths surrounded his
infancy as they surrounded the infancy of Kyros, and
popular legend saw in him the hero-prince who had been
deserted in childhood and brought up among squalid
surroundings, until the time came that he should declare
himself in his true character and receive his rightful
inheritance.1 He was born, it was said, of an unknown

1 Sargon may "be the Thilgamos of .ZElian, transmitted in a Persian
dress, and the legend about him is evidently that connected by Agathias
(ii. 25, 15) with Beletares (1 Tiglath-Pileser), who is stated to have
been the gardener of the former king, Belokhos or Beleous, and the
founder of a new dynasty. In the Epic of Gisdhubar the name of the
gardener wooed by Istar is given as Isullanu the gardener of Anu.
The text giving the legend of Sargon, as published in W.A.I, iii. 4, 7,
is as follows :

1. " Sargon, the mighty king, the king of Accad (am) I.

2. My mother (was) a princess ; my father I knew not ; the

brother of my father dwells in the mountain.

3. (In) the city of Azupiranu, which is built on the bank of the

Euphrates,

4. (my) mother, the princess, conceived me ; in a secret place she

brought me forth ;

5. she placed me in a basket of reeds; with bitumen my exit

(gate) she closed ;

6. she gave me to the river, which drowned me not.

7. The river carried me along; to Akki the irrigator it brought me;

8. Akki the irrigator in the goodness of (his) heart lifted me up ;

9. Akki the irrigator reared me as (his own) son ;

INTRODUCTORY. 27

father ; as Mars had wooed the mother of the founder of
Eome, so some god whom later tradition feared to name
had wooed the mother of the founder of the first Semitic
empire. She brought forth her first-born "in a secret
place" by the side of the Euphrates, and placed him in
a basket of rushes which she daubed with bitumen and
entrusted to the waters of the river. The story reminds
us of Perseus launched upon the sea with his mother
Danae in a boat, of Eomulus and Eemus exposed to the
fury of the Tiber, and still more of Moses in his ark of
bulrushes upon the Nile. The Euphrates refused to
drown its future lord, and bore the child in safety to
Akki "the irrigator," the representative of the Accadian
peasants who tilled the land for their Semitic masters.
In this lowly condition and among a subjugated race

10. Akki the irrigator made me his gardener,

§11. (and in) my gardenership did Istar love me.
12. For 45 (?) years I ruled the kingdom.

13. The men of the black-headed race I governed, I (organised).

14. Over rugged mountains in chariots of bronze I rode.

15. I (governed) the upper mountains ;

16. I (ruled) the rulers of the lower mountains.

17. To the sea-coast (?) three times did I advance; Dilmun sub-

(mitted) ;

18. The fortress of the goddess of Hades (Dur-AN-Kigal) bowed ....

19. I destroyed ....

20. When the king who comes after me in future (days)

21. (shall govern) the men of the black-headed race ;

22. (shall ride) over the rugged mountains in chariots (of bronze),

23. shall govern the upper mountains (and rule) the kings

24. of the lower mountains ; (to) the sea-coast (?)

25. shall advance three times ; (shall cause Dilmun to submit) j

26. (when) the fortress of the goddess of Hades shall bow ; from

my city of Accad "

Ti-ti-sdl-lat (?) seems to mean " the sea-coast" of the Mediterranean ;
cp. Tit-num, the Accadian name of Phoenicia, as well as Dhi-dhi, ano
ther Accadian name of the same country (W. A. I. ii. 51, 19).

28 LECTURE I.

Sargon was brought up. Akki took compassion on the
little waif, and reared him as if he had been his own son.
As he grew older he was set to till the garden and culti
vate the fruit-trees, and while engaged in this humble
work attracted the love of the goddess Istar. Then came
the hour of his deliverance from servile employment, and,
like David, he made his way to a throne. For long years
he ruled the black-headed race of Accad ; he rode through
subjugated countries in chariots of bronze, and crossed
the Persian Gulf to the sacred isle of Dilmun. The very
name the people gave him was a proof of his predestined
rise to greatness. Sargon was not his real title. This
was Sarganu, which a slight change of pronunciation
altered into Sargina, a word that conveyed the meaning
of " constituted" or "predestined" "king" to his Acca-
dian subjects. It was the form assumed in their mouths
by the Semitic Sarru-Jcinu, and thus reminded them of
the Sun-god Tammuz, the youthful bridegroom of Istar,
who was addressed as ablu Jcinu or "only son," as well
as of Nebo "the very son" (ablu Jcinu) of the god Mero-
dach.1 Sargina, however, was not the only name by
which the king was known to them. They called him
also Dddil or Dddal, a title which the Semitic scribes
afterwards explained to mean " Sargon, the king of
constituted right (sar-kinti\ deviser of constituted law,
deviser of prosperity," though its true signification was
rather "the very wise."2

1 Upon the inscription of " Sar-ga-ni, the king of the city, the king
of Accad," see Pinches, Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch. June 1886, p. 244.
Sarganu has the same origin as the Biblical Serug.

2 W. A. I. ii. 48, 40 and 32, where (with the earlier Sumerian pro
nunciation tal-tal or tatal) it is a title of Ea as the god of " wisdom.'

INTRODUCTORY. 29

But in spite of the atmosphere of myth which came
to enshroud him, as it enshrouded the persons of Kyros,
of Charlemagne, and of other heroes of popular history,
Sargon was a historical monarch and the founder of a
really great empire. The British Museum actually pos
sesses an inscribed egg of veined marble which he dedi
cated to the Sun-god of Sippara, and the seal of his
librarian Ibni-sarru is in the hands of M. Le Clercq of
Paris. What may be termed the scientific literature of
the library of Nineveh makes frequent reference to
him, and we learn that it was for the great library
which he established in his capital city of Accad that
the two standard Babylonian works on astronomy and
terrestrial omens were originally compiled. The work
on astronomy was entitled " The Observations of Bel,"\
and consisted of no less than seventy-two books, deal
ing with such matters as the conjunction of the sun
and moon, the phases of Yenus, and the appearances
of comets. It was translated in later days into Greek
by the historian Berossos; and though supplemented
by numerous additions in its passage through the hands
of generations of Babylonian astronomers, the original

"When applied to Sargon, the title was ideographically expressed by
repeating the character for "king," in order to denote that he was
" the king indeed." One of the earliest of the monarchs whose names
are found at Tel-loh is called Taltal-kur-galla, " the wise one of the
great mountain."

2 Or perhaps "The Illumination of Bel (Mul-lil)," Namar-Bili. See
my paper on " The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians," in
the Tr. Soc. Bib. Arch. iii. 1 (1874). Later copyists mistook the title
for a proper name, and accordingly referred the compilation of the work
to a certain Namar-Bili. Up to the time of Berossos, however, it was
remembered that the god Bel himself was its traditional author, and the
work is sometimes quoted as simply "Bel" (e.g. W. A. I. iii. 52, 27).

30 LECTURE I.

work contained so many records of eclipses as to demon
strate the antiquity of Babylonian astronomy eyen in
the remote age of Sargon himself. But besides our
knowledge of Sargon' s patronage of learning, we also
know something about the civil history of his reign. A
copy of its annals has come down to us. "We gather
from these that he was not only successful in overthrow
ing all opposition at home, he was also equally successful
abroad. His first campaign was against the powerful
kingdom of Elam in the East, where he overthrew the
enemy and mutilated their slain. Next he turned to
the "West, laying his yoke on Syria, and subjugating
"the four quarters" of the world. Then the rival kings
of Babylon and other Chaldsean cities felt his power;
and out of the spoil of the vanquished he built the city
of Accad and gave it its name. From this time forward
his attention was chiefly devoted to the West. Year after
year he penetrated into Syria, until at last, we are told,
" he had neither equal nor rival; " he crossed the Mediter
ranean to the island we now call Cyprus, and "in the
third year," at the bounds of the setting sun, his hands
conquered all peoples and his mouth decreed a single
empire. Here on the shores of Cyprus the great conqueror
erected images of himself, and then carried the booty of
the island to the opposite coast of Asia. Such a glimpse
into the history of what became afterwards a Grecian
sea, when as yet no Greeks had made their way to their
later home, is startling to those whose conceptions of
authentic history have been limited by the narrow horizon
of the classical world. Its trustworthiness, however, has
been curiously verified by a discovery made by General
de Cesnola in the treasure-vaults of a Kyprian temple

INTRODUCTORY. 31

among the ruins of the ancient Kurion. Here, among
other haematite cylinders of early Babylonian origin,
he found one the first owner of which describes himself
as a " servant" or " worshipper" of " the deified Naram-
Sin."1 Naram-Sin was the son and successor of Sargon,
and it is not likely that he would have received divine •
honours after the fall of the dynasty to which he belonged.
The fact that the cylinder was discovered in Cyprus
seems to show that even after Sargon' s death a connec
tion continued to exist between Cyprus and the imperial
power of Babylonia. Naram-Sin, however, was more bent
on the conquest of Magana, or the Sinaitic Peninsula,
than upon further campaigns in the West. Sinai, with its
mines of turquoise and copper, had been a prize coveted
by the Egyptians ever since the age of the Third Dynasty,
and one of the first efforts of the rising rival power on
the banks of the Euphrates was to gain possession of the
same country. Naram-Sin, so runs the annalistic tablet,
" marched to the land of Magana; the land of Magana
he conquered, and overcame its king."

The land of Maga*na was already known to the inha
bitants of Babylonia.2 The earliest Chaldsean monuments

1 See my paper in the Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch. v. 2 (1877).

2 Oppert, Lenormant and myself have long since shown that Magan
originally denoted the Sinaitic peninsula, and Delattre has recently
made it clear (L'Asie occidentals) that Melukhkha, which is constantly
associated with Magan, was the desert district immediately to the south
of the Wadiel-'Arish. Assur-bani-pal transfers the name of Magan to
the neighbouring land of lower Egypt, while Melukhkha is used for
Ethiopia or Meroe by Sargon and his successors. The name of Magan,
however, was probably used from the first in an extended sense, since
a list of reeds (W. A. I. v. 32. 64, 65) describes the iippatu, or "papy
rus," Heb. suph, as "the reed of Magan" (Makkan in Assyrian). The
early date to which a knowledge of the plant went back is evidenced

32 LECTURE I.

yet discovered are those which have been excavated at
Tel-loh in southern Chaldsea by a Frenchman, M. de
Sarzec, and are now deposited in the Louvre. Some of
them go back almost to the very beginnings of Chaldean
art and cuneiform writing. Indeed, the writing is hardly
yet cuneiform; the primitive pictorial forms of many
of the characters are but thinly disguised, and the ver
tical direction they originally followed, like Chinese, is
still preserved. The language and art alike are Proto-
Chaldsean : there is as yet no sign that the Semite was
in the land. Among the monuments are seated figures
carved out of stone. The stone in several instances is
diorite, a stone so hard that even the modern workman
may well despair of chiselling it into the lineaments of
the human form. Now an inscription traced upon one
of the figures tells us that the stone was brought from
the land of Magan. Already, therefore, before the time
of Sargon and the rise of Semitic supremacy and civil
isation, the peninsula of Sinai was not only known to the

by its having an Accadian name, gizi, " the flowering reed" (borrowed
by Semitic Babylonian under the form of Tdsu). That Magan or
Magana was a mountainous country appears from a bilingual hymn to
Adar, which mentions "the mountain of Magana" (W.A.I, iv. 13,
16); and in "W. A. I. ii. 51, 17, while Melukhkha is described as "the
country of turquoise," Magan is described as " the country of bronze."
It is possible that the name of Magan or Magana is derived from
mafka, which signifies in old Egyptian "the turquoise" of the Sinaitic
mines. In an early Babylonian geographical list (W. A. I. iv. 38. 13,
14), Magan and Melukhkha are associated with the Babylonian sea
port of Eridu, which throws light on " the ships " of Magan and
Melukhkha mentioned in W. A. I. ii. 46. 6, 7, immediately after "the
ships of Dilmun." The trading ships of Eridu would have touched first
at Dilmun, then at Magan, and finally at Melukhkha. For a Baby
lonian country or mountain (!) of Magan, such as some scholars have
dreamed of, there is not a particle of evidence.

INTRODUCTORY. 33

inhabitants of Chaldoea, but blocks of stone were trans
ported from it to the stoneless plain of Babylonia, and
there made plastic under the hand of the sculptor. I
have already alluded to the fact that the quarries of Sinai
had been known to the Egyptians and worked by them
as early as the epoch of the Third Dynasty, some 6000
years ago. Is it more than a coincidence that one of
the most marvellous statues in the world, and the chief
ornament of the Museum of Bulaq, is a seated figure of
king Khephren of the Fourth Dynasty, carved out of
green diorite, like the statues of Tel-loh, and representing
the monarch in almost the same attitude ? The Baby
lonian work is ruder than the Egyptian work, it is true ]
but if we place them side by side, it is hard to resist the
conviction that both belong to the same school of sculp
ture, and that the one is but a less skilful imitation of
the other. The conviction grows upon us when we find
that diorite is as foreign to the soil of Egypt as it is to
that of Babylonia, and that the standard of measurement
marked upon the plan of the city, which one of the/- ^
figures of Tel-loh holds upon his lap, is the same as /» -m
the standard of measurement of the Egyptian pyramid-
builders — the kings of the fourth and two following
dynasties.1

Egyptian research has independently arrived at the
conclusion that the pyramid-builders were at least as old
as the fourth millennium before the Christian era. The
great pyramids of Grizeh were in course of erection, the
hieroglyphic system of writing was already fully deve-

1 The cubit of 20'63, quite different from the later Assyro-Baby-
lonian cubit of 21'6. See Flinders Petrie in Nature, Aug. 9, 1883,
p. 341.

34 LECTURE I.

loped, Egypt itself was thoroughly organised and in the
enjoyment of a high culture and civilisation, at a time
when, according to Archbishop Usher's chronology, the
world was being created. The discoveries at Tel-loh
have revealed to us a corresponding period in the history
of Babylonia, earlier considerably than the age of Sargon
of Accad, in which we seem to find traces of contact
between Babylonia and the Egyptians of the Old Empire.
It would even seem as if the conquests of Naram-Sin in
Sinai were due to the fall of the Sixth Dynasty and the
overthrow of the power of the old Egyptian empire.
For some centuries after that event Egypt is lost to
history, and its garrisons and miners in the Sinaitic
peninsula must have been recalled to serve against
enemies nearer home.

If there is any truth in the arguments I have been
using, we may now, I think, accept with confidence the
date assigned to Sargon of Accad by Nabonidos, strange
as it may appear to read of expeditions undertaken by
Babylonian kings against Cyprus and Sinai at so remote
an epoch. Important results will follow from such a
conclusion fbr the history of Babylonian religion. We
shall have time enough for the slow absorption of Acca-
dian religious ideas into the uncultured Semitic mind,
for the gradual transformation they underwent, and for
the development of those later forms of belief and practice
to which the main bulk of our materials relate. "We
can now trace in some measure the modes in which
Accadian and Semite acted and re-acted upon one another,
as well as the chief periods at which the influence of the !
one or of the other was at its height.

The monuments of Tel-loh carry us back to a pre-

INTRODUCTORY. 35

Semitic era. The deities they commemorate are Proto-
Chaldeean, and we may gather from them some idea of
Proto-Chaldeean religion in the heyday of its power.
Babylonia was still divided into a number of petty states,
which were, however, at times united for a while under
a single head, and each state had its own peculiar cult.
Gradually the encroaching Semite dispossessed the older
dynasties and came to form an upper class, first of soldiers
and traders, and then of priests also, throughout the land.
It was in northern Babylonia probably that he made
his influence first felt. Here, at any rate, the kingdom
was founded which culminated in the brilliant reigns of
Sargon of Accad and his son Naram-Sin. Before this,
the old culture of the non-Semitic population had been
fully absorbed by the Semitic intruders. The intercourse
between the two races was already for the most part a
peaceful one. The great mass of the older people were
contented to till the ground, to irrigate the fields, and to
become the serfs of their Semitic lords. But inter-mar
riages must have often taken place; members of the
same family bear sometimes Accadian, sometimes Semitic
names, and the same king, whether Accadian or Semite,
issues his edicts in both languages. The cuneiform
system of writing was handed on to the Semites while /
still in an incomplete state. New values and meanings
were given to the signs, new characters and combinations
of characters were devised, and in writing Semitic words
the old ideographic usage of the Accadian script con
tinued to be imitated. The process was aided by the
patronage afforded to literature in the court of Sargon.
Here Semitic and Accadian scribes vied with one another
in compiling new texts and in making the old ones

D 2

36 LECTURE I.

accessible to Semitic learners. An artificial literary dia
lect sprang up, the basis of which was Semitic, but into
which Accadian words and phrases were thrown pele-
mele. By way of revenge, the Accadian texts which
emanated from the literati of the court were filled with
Semitic words and expressions. Sometimes they were
the work of Semites writing in a foreign language, some
times of Accadians who were living in an atmosphere
of Semitic life and thought.

What happened in the case of the language must have
happened also in the case of religion. "We know that
many of the gods of the later Babylonian faith have
Accadian names, and that the ideas connected with them
betray a non-Semitic origin ; we may therefore expect to
find Accadian religious conceptions accommodated to those
of the Semite, and Semitic conceptions so closely inter
twined with Accadian beliefs as to make it impossible for
us now to separate them. How far this is the case I
hope to point out in a future Lecture.

The fall of the dynasty of Sargon may have brought
with it a temporary revival of Accadian supremacy. At
any rate, the Semitic element always remained strongest
in northern Babylonia : in southern Babylonia it seems
to me not impossible that one of the numerous dialects
of the old language may have lingered down to the time
of Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidos. But even in northern
Babylonia the Semitic element was not pure. It mainly
represented the dominant class, and not the people as
well, as was the case in Assyria. The result is that the
Babylonian presents us with a moral and intellectual
type which is not genuinely Semitic. To convince our
selves of this fact, it is only necessary to compare the

INTRODUCTORY. 37

Babylonian with his neighbour the Assyrian. The As
syrian has all the characteristics of the Semite. His
hooked nose and angular features proclaim his origin on
the physical side as unmistakably as his intensity, his
ferocity, his love of trade and his nomadic habits pro
claim it on the moral side. The Babylonian, on the
other hand, was square-built and somewhat full-faced,
an agriculturist rather than a soldier, a scholar rather
than a trader. The intensity of religious belief which
marked the Assyrian was replaced in him by superstition,
and the barbarities which the Assyrian perpetrated in
the name of Assur and loved to record in his inscriptions
were foreign to his nature. If the Assyrian was the
Eoman of the ancient East, the Babylonians were the
Chinese.

Nevertheless, the contrast of type displayed by the
two nations must have been the growth of centuries, and
due to that absorption of one race by another of which
Ireland furnishes so familiar an example. The Semites
of Babylonia — the Babylonians, as I will henceforth call
them — and the Assyrians must once have been the same
people. Assyrian and Babylonian differ only as two
English dialects differ, and are therefore known by the
common name of Assyrian ; and it was from Babylonia
that the Assyrians derived their system of writing, the
greater part of their literature, their religion and their
laws. It is true that some of this may have been bor
rowed in later times when the two kingdoms existed
side by side, or when Babylonia became the appanage
of its ruder but more warlike neighbour ; the main bulk,
however, like the language, must have been the heritage
which the ancestors of Sennacherib and Sarclanapallos

38 LECTURE I.

carried with, them into their northern home. The reli
gions of Babylonia and Assyria must be treated together ;
we shall find, indeed, that in certain particulars they
disagree ; but these particulars form no portion of their
essential character ; they are merely unessentials which
can be put aside without injury to our view of the main
facts.

But, it will be asked, what interest can the religions
of Babylonia and Assyria have for us, much more an
inquiry into their nature and origin ? They have long
since perished, like the people who professed them, and
have left no apparent traces of their influence upon the
nations about whom we know and care most. The
Greeks and Eomans concerned themselves so little with
these Eastern barbarians as neither to read nor to pre
serve the only Greek history of Chaldsea which was
written by a native and professed to be derived from
native accounts ; we owe the fragments we have of it to
the apologetic zeal of Christian controversialists. Still
less would it appear that these old people of Babylonia
and Assyria can have had any influence upon the world
of to-day, or have served to mould the ideas and the
society of modern Europe. Such questions may be asked,
and until lately it would have been hard to answer them.

And yet a moment's consideration might have shown
that there was one nation at all events which has exer
cised, and still exercises, a considerable influence upon
our own thought and life, and which had been brought
into close contact with the religion and culture of Baby
lonia at a critical epoch in its history. The influence of
Jewish religion upon Christianity, and consequently upon
the races that have been moulded by Christianity, has

INTRODUCTORY. 39

been lasting and profound. "Now Jewish religion wag
intimately bound up with Jewish history, more intimately
perhaps than has been the case with any other great
religion of the world. It took its colouring from the.
events that marked the political life of the Hebrew
people ; it developed in unison with their struggles and
successes, their trials and disappointments. Its great
devotional utterance, the Book of Psalms, is national,
not individual ; the individual in it has merged his own
aspirations and sufferings into those of the whole com
munity. The course of Jewish prophecy is equally
stamped with the impress of the national fortunes. It
grows clearer and more catholic as the intercourse of the
Jewish people with those around them becomes wider ;
and the lesson is taught at last that the God of the Jews
is the God also of the whole world. Now the chosen
instruments for enforcing this lesson, as we are expressly
told, were the Assyrian and the Babylonian. The Assy
rian was the rod of God's anger,1 while the Babylonish
exile was the bitter punishment meted out to Judah for
its sins. The captives who returned again to their own
land came back with changed hearts and purified minds ;
from henceforward Jerusalem was to be the unrivalled
dwelling-place of " the righteous nation which keepeth
the truth."

Apart, therefore, from any influence which the old
religious beliefs of Babylonia may have had upon the
Greeks, and which, as we shall see, was not so wholly
wanting as was formerly imagined, their contact with
the religious conceptions of the Jewish exiles must, to

i Is. x. 5.

4-0 LECTURE I.

say the least, liave produced an effect which it is well
worth our while to study. Hitherto, the traditional
view has been that this effect exhibited itself wholly on
the antagonistic side; the Jews carried nothing away
from the land of their captivity except an intense hatred
of idolatry, more especially Babylonian, as well as of
the beliefs and practices associated therewith. Now and
then, it is true, some bold spirit, like Bishop Warburton,
may have ventured to propound the paradox that the
doctrine of the resurrection was first learnt by the Jews
in Babylonia, but it was treated generally as a paradox,
and of late years, if admitted at all, was considered a
proof of the influence not of the Babylonians but of
their Persian conquerors.

The traditional view had no facts to build upon except
such conclusions as it could draw from the Old Testament
itself. To-day all this is changed. "We know something
now about the deities whom the Babylonians worshipped,
about the rites and ceremonies they practised, and about
the religious ideas they entertained. The result of this
knowledge is to show us that the Jews did not live in
the midst of the Babylonians for seventy years without
borrowing from them something more than the names of
the months. Nay more ; it shows us that the language
of the Babylonian conquerors was not the so-called
Chaldee, which is really an Aramaic dialect, but a lan
guage more closely resembling that of the exiles them
selves. It is true that a Jew could not have understood a
Babylonian, any more than a "Welshman can understand
a Breton, but it was very easy for him to learn to
understand. Assyrian, that is to say the language of
Babylonia, is on the whole more nearly related to Hebrew

INTRODUCTORY. 41

than it is to any other member of the Semitic family of
speech.

But it was not only through the Babylonian exile that
the religious ideas of the Babylonian and the Jew came
into contact with each other. It was then, indeed, that
the ideas of the conquering race — the actual masters of
the captives, who had long been accustomed to regard
Babylonia as the home of a venerable learning and
culture — were likely to make their deepest and most
enduring impression ; it was then, too, that the Jew for
the first time found the libraries and ancient literature
of Chaldaea open to his study and use. But old tradition
had already pointed to the valley of the Euphrates as
the primeval cradle of his race. We all remember how
Abraham, it is said, was born in Ur of the Chaldees, and
how the earlier chapters of Genesis make the Euphrates
and Tigris two of the rivers of Paradise, and describe
the building of the Tower of Babylon as the cause of
the dispersion of mankind. Now the Hebrew language
was the language not only of the Israelites, but also of
those earlier inhabitants of the country whom the Jews
called Canaanites and the Greeks Phoenicians. Like
the Israelites, the Phoenicians held that their ancestors
had come from the Persian Gulf and the alluvial plain
of Babylonia. The tradition is confirmed by the re
searches of comparative philology. Many of the words
which the Semites have in common seem to point to the
neighbourhood of Babylonia as the district from which
those who used them originally came, and where they
called the fauna and flora of the country by common
names. Their first home appears to have been in the
low-lying desert which stretches eastward of Chaldeea —

42 LECTURE I.

on the very side of the Euphrates, in fact, on which
stood the great city of Ur, the modern Mugheir. Here
they led a nomad life, overawed by the higher culture
of the settled Accadian race, until a time came when
they began to absorb it themselves, and eventually, as
we have seen, to dispossess and supersede their teachers.

The tribes which travelled northward and westward
must, we should think, have carried with them some of
the elements of the culture they had learnt from their
Accadian neighbours. And such, indeed, we find to be
the case. The names of Babylonian deities meet us
again in Palestine and the adjoining Semitic lands.
Nebo, the Babylonian god of prophecy and literature,
has given his name to towns that stood within the terri
tories of Eeuben and Judah, as well as to the Moabite
mountain on which Moses breathed his last; Anu, the
Babylonian god of heaven, and his female consort Anatu,
re-appear in Beth-Anath, "the temple of Anatu," and
Anathoth, the birth-place of Jeremiah ; and Sinai itself is
but the mountain of Sin, the Babylonian Moon-god.1

"We may thus assume that there were two periods in
the history of the Jewish people in which they came
under the influence of the religious conceptions of Baby
lonia. There was the later period of the Babylonish

1 That this is the true derivation of the name of Sinai and of the
desert of Sin is plain now that we know that the district in question
was possessed by Aramaic-speaking tribes whose kinsfolk spread east
ward to the banks of the Euphrates, and who were allied in blood to
the population of Moab and Canaan, where the names of Babylonian
deities were not unfrequent. The name of Sin, the Moon-god, is met
with in an Himyaritic inscription, and a god who thus found his way
to southern Arabia would be equally likely to find his way to northern
Arabia.

INTRODUCTORY. 43

exile, when the influence was strong and direct; there
was also the earlier period, when the amount of influence
is more hard to determine. Much will depend upon the
view we take of the age of the Pentateuch, and of the
traditions or histories embodied therein. Some will be
disposed to see in Abraham the conveyer of Babylonian
ideas to the west ; others will consider that the Israelites
made their first acquaintance with the gods and legends
of Babylonia through the Canaanites and other earlier
inhabitants of Palestine. Those who incline to the latter
belief may doubt whether the fathers of the Canaanitish
tribes brought the elements of their Babylonian beliefs
with them from Chaldasa, or whether these beliefs were
of later importation, due to the western conquests of
Sargon and his successors. Perhaps what I have to say
in my subsequent Lectures will afford some data for
deciding which of these conflicting opinions is the more
correct.

Meanwhile, I will conclude this Lecture with a few
illustrations of the extent to which the study of Baby
lonian religion may be expected to throw light on the
earlier portions of Scripture. We have already noticed
the curious parallelism which exists between the legend
of Sargon's exposure in an ark of bulrushes and the
similar exposure of the great Israelitish leader Moses on
the waters of the Nile. The parallelism exists even
further than this common account of their infancy.
Sargon of Accad was emphatically the founder of Semitic
supremacy in Babylonia ; he was the great lawgiver of
Babylonian legend; and to him was assigned the com-
, pilation of those works on astrology and augury from
which the wise men of the Chaldeeans subsequently

44 LECTURE I.

derived their lore. Moses was equally the legislator of
the Israelites and the successful vindicator of Semitic
independence from the exactions of Egyptian tyranny,
and future generations quoted the books of the Hebrew
law under his name. As we have seen, Sargon was a
historical personage, and popular tradition merely treated
him as it has treated other heroes of the past, by attach
ing to him the myths and legends that had once been
told of the gods.

Now the name of the great Hebrew legislator has long
been a puzzle and a subject of dispute. In the Hebrew
Old Testament it is connected with the Hebrew verb
maskdh, " to draw out," not, indeed, in the sense that
Moses was he who had been drawn out of the water, for
this would not be grammatically permissible, though
Pharaoh's daughter puns upon the idea (Exod. ii. 10),
but in the sense of a leader who had drawn his people
out of the house of bondage and led them through the
waves of the sea. The translators of the Septuagint, on
the other hand, living as they did in Egypt, endeavoured
to give the word an Egyptian form and an Egyptian j
etymology. With them the name is always Mwvo-^s,
which Josephos tells us is derived from the Egyptian
words mdj " water,'7 and uses, " saved from the water."1
But this etymology, apart from other imperfections,
depends upon the change the translators of the Septuagint j
have themselves made in the pronunciation of the name*
Modern Egyptian scholars, equally willing to find for it
an Egyptian derivation, have had recourse to the Egyp- 1
tian messu or mes, "a son." This word, it is true, when'

occurring in proper names is usually combined with thej

. . 1

1 Antiq. ii. 9. 6 ; Cont. Ap. i. 31.

INTRODUCTORY. 45

name of a deity ; Barneses, for example, the Sesostris of
the Greeks, being written in the hieroglyphics Ea-messu,
"born of the Sun-god." But it is conceivable that we
might occasionally meet with it alone, and it is also con
ceivable, though not very probable, that the daughter of
the Egyptian king would assign to her adopted child the
simple name of " son." It is much less conceivable that
such an Egyptian name would be that by which a national
hero would be afterwards known to his Semitic country
men. It is difficult to believe that the founder of the
Israelitish people would have borne a title which the
Israelites did not understand, and which could remind
them only of that hated Egyptian land wherein they had
been slaves.

Josephos has preserved an extract from the Egyptian
historian Manetho, which relates the Egyptian version
of the story of the Exodus as it was told in the second
century before our era. In this it is stated that the
earlier name of Moses was Osarsiph, and that he had
been priest of Heliopolis or On. Here it is evident that
Moses and Joseph have been confounded together. The
.name of Joseph, who married the daughter of the priest
of On, has been decomposed into two elements, the first
of which is the divine name Jeho, and this has been
changed into its supposed Egyptian equivalent Osar or
Osiris. It is clear that, whatever might have been his
opinion about the name of Joseph, Manetho had no doubt
that that of Moses was purely Israelitish. It was not until
he had become the Israelitish lawgiver and had ceased to
be an Egyptian priest that Osarsiph took the name of
Moses.

But Moses finds no satisfactory etymology in the

46 LECTURE I.

pages of the Hebrew lexicon. It stands alone among
Hebrew proper names, like Aaron and David. We do
not hear of any other persons who have borne the name.
If, therefore, it is Semitic, it must belong to an older
stratum of Semitic nomenclature than that preserved
to us in the Old Testament. We must look to other
branches of the Semitic stock for its explanation.

There is only one other branch of the Semitic family
whose records are earlier than those of the Hebrews.
Arabic literature begins long after the Christian era,
when Jewish and Greek and even Christian names and
ideas had penetrated into the heart of the Arabian penin
sula. The Arabic language, moreover, belongs to a
different division of the Semitic family of speech from
that to which Hebrew belongs. To compare Arabic and
Hebrew together is like comparing Latin with modern
German. There is, however, one Semitic language which
has the closest affinities to Hebrew, and this is also the
language of which we possess records older than those
of the Hebrew Scriptures. I need hardly say that I am
referring to Assyrian.

Now the Assyrian equivalent of the Hebrew Mosheh,
" Moses," would be mdsu, and, as it happens, mdsu is a
word which occurs not unfrequently in the inscriptions.
It was a word of Accadian origin, but since the days of
Sargon of Accad had made itself so thoroughly at home
in the language of the Semitic Babylonians as to count
henceforth as a genuinely Semitic term. Mdsu signified
as nearly as possible all that we mean by the word
"hero."1 As such, it was an epithet applied to more

" hero," has of course no connection with mdsu, " double,"
on which see Jensen, in the Zeitschrift fur Assyrioloyie, i. 3, pp. 259,

INTRODUCTORY. 47

than one divinity; there was one god more especially
for whom it became a name. This god was the deity
sometimes called Adar by Assyrian scholars, sometimes
Nin-ip, but whose ordinary name among the Assyrians
is still a matter of uncertainty. He was a form of the
Sun-god, originally denoting the scorching sun of mid
day. He thus became invested with the sterner attri
butes of the great luminary of day, and was known to
his worshippers as " the warrior of the gods." The title
of Mdsu, however, was not confined to Adar. It was
given also to another solar deity, Merodach, the tutelar
god of Babylon and the antagonist of the dragon of
chaos, and was shared by him with JSTergal, whose special
function it was to guard and defend the world of the
dead. But Nergal himself was but the sun of night, the
solar deity, that is to say, after he had accomplished his
daily work in the bright world above and had descended
to illuminate for a time the world below.

It will thus be seen that the name of mdsu, " the hero"
or " leader," was in a peculiar sense associated with the
Sun-god, the central object of primitive Semitic worship.
But it seems to have had another signification which it
is difficult to bring into connection with the ideas of
leadership and war. The character which represented

260. In W. A. I. iii. 70, 167, mdsu is rendered by asaridu, "first
born" or "leader" (in 1. 171 by ellu and ibbu, "illustrious"). Some
might perhaps see a reference to the other meaning of mdsu (" twin")
in the close association of Moses and Aaron. There is no difficulty
about the equivalence of the sibilants in the Hebrew and Assyrian
words, since the Hebrew sJrin corresponds with the Assyrian s in proper
names which, like Asshur, belong to the earlier period of Hebrew inter
course with Babylonia, and in words which are not proper names it
always corresponds. The name of Aaron, I may add, seems to find its
root in the Assyrian aharu, " to send."

48 LECTURE T.

the idea of mdsu or "hero," also represented the idea of
"a collection of books."1 With the determinative of
personality prefixed, it further denotes "a scribe" or
" librarian." It is at least remarkable that Moses the
Hebrew legislator was also the unwearied scribe to whom
Hebrew tradition referred the collection of its earliest
documents and the compilation of its legal code.

But it was in the signification of "hero" that the
Assyrian mdsu made its way into astrology, and was
thus carried wherever a knowledge of Chaldaean astro
logical lore was spread. The Accadians had pictured
the sky as the counterpart of the rich alluvial plain of
Babylonia in which they dwelt. In the remote age to
which their first observations of the stars reached back,
the sun still entered the zodiacal constellation known to
us as Taurus at the time of the vernal equinox. It is
in consequence of this fact that the constellation is even
yet called by us Taurus, "the bull." The sun was
likened by the old Accadian star-gazers to a ploughman
yoking his oxen to his glittering plough; nay, he was
even likened to an ox himself; and the title given to
Merodach the Sun-god when he passed through the
twelve zodiacal signs was Gudi-bir, "the bull of light."
Hence it was that the ecliptic was termed " the yoke of
heaven," bound as it were upon the neck of the solar
bull ; that the first of the zodiacal signs, the opener of
the primitive Accadian year, was called "the directing
bull," "the bull who guides" the year; and that two
prominent stars received the names of "Bull of Ami"
and "Bull of Eimmon." But as in the Babylonian

1 See W. A. L ii. 48. 25, 26, where mas is explained by kissu sa
mujart.

INTRODUCTORY. 49

plain below, so too in the plain of heaven above, there
were sheep as well as oxen. The seven planets were
"the seven bell-wethers," and by their side was another
group of seven stars, entitled "the lu-mdsi" or "sheep
of the hero."1 The first of these was "the star of the
wain;" and among them were reckoned the star of " the
eagle," the symbol of the meridian sun, the star of the
goddess Bahu, "the pure wild heifer" of the gods, and
the star " of the shepherd of the heavenly herds," the
hero "who fights with weapons." The last-mentioned
star is Eegulus, and in his Greek name of Bootes, "the
herdsman," we may see a lingering echo of the Accadian
story which made its way through the hands of the
Phoenicians to Greece. Bootes, however, was not ori
ginally the " hero," one of whose flock he was himself
held to be. Mdsu, the "hero" of the astronomers, could
only have been the sun.

It is not more strange that a name thus intimately
associated with the religious and astrological beliefs of
Babylonia should have found its way to the west, than
that names like Nebo and Sin, which are similarly reli
gious and astrological, should have done so too. Moses,
! it will be remembered, died on the summit of Mount
Nebo in sight of the " moon-city" Jericho. Now Nebo,

1 Jensen has shown that mad in this combination was further used
in the sense of "twins," the stars composing the "lu-masi" being
grouped as twins. It is an example of the obliteration of the original
signification of an epithet by a secondary one. "The sheep of the
hero," the Accadian Iu-mas9 became the Semitic lu-mdsi, " the twin
oxen," lu being an Assyrian word for "ox." The "seven lu-bad," or
"old sheep," shows, however, what the primitive meaning of lu must
have been.

E

50 LECTURE I.

as we shall see, was the prophet-god of Babylon and
Borsippa, the offspring of the Sun-god Merodach, and
the patron of writing and literature. He also figured
among the stars. Together with the stars of Istar and
Nergal, he was accounted one of the seven " heroes" or
mdsu. As Nebo was the interpreter of Merodach, so in
the language of astrology his star was itself a mdsu or
solar hero. Sin was the Babylonian name of the Moon-
god. We learn from a Himyaritic inscription that his
name had been carried into southern Arabia, and there
is therefore no reason why it should not have been im
ported into northern Arabia as well. And we seem to
meet with it in the name of the wilderness of Sin, to
which Moses conducted the children of Israel when they
had first left Egypt, before they arrived at Mount Sinai.
Sinai itself can scarcely signify anything else than the
mountain sacred to the Moon-god ; and we can therefore
well believe that a shrine of Sin may have existed upon
it, and pilgrims have made their way to the sanctuary
long before the Israelites demanded their " three days'
journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord"
(Exod. viii. 27).

It is possible that the name of Joseph, like that cf
Moses, may receive its explanation from Babylonia.
Already at the time when the book of Genesis was
written, its original meaning seems to have been for
gotten. An alternative etymology is there proposed
(xxx. 23, 24), from dsdph, "to take away," and ydsdph,
" to add ; " while in the Psalms (Ixxxi. 6) another deriva
tion is suggested, which would connect it (as was after- j
wards done by Manetho) with the sacred name of the ,

INTRODUCTORY. 61

God of Israel.1 Now Joseph was not only the father
of the Israelitish tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, he
was also a deity worshipped by the older inhabitants
of Canaan. More than two centuries before the date
assigned by Egyptologists to the Exodus, the great
Egyptian conqueror Thothmes III. inscribed upon the
walls of the temple of Karnak the names of the cities
captured by him in Palestine. Among them are Yaqab-el,
"Jacob the God," and Iseph-el, " Joseph the God."
We are therefore tempted to think that the expression
"the house of Joseph" may have belonged to an earlier
period than that in which it was applied to the tribes of
Ephraim and Manasseh ; that, in fact, like Beth-el, " the
house of God," it was once used by the Canaanites in a
literal sense. Now Beth-el, we are told, the older name
of which was Luz, was taken by the house of Joseph,
and became in later times one of the two great sanctuaries
of the northern kingdom. "What if Beth-el had itself
been the more ancient " house of Joseph ;" what if " the
house of the god" and "the house of Joseph" had in
Canaanitish days been one and the same ? The question
may receive an answer if we turn for it to the Assyrian
inscriptions. Here we find asipu or asip used in the
sense of " a diviner." The word was actually borrowed
by the Aramaic of Daniel under the form of ashshdph'^

1 Manetho (ap. Joseph, cont. Ap. i. 28) states that the original
name of Moses was Osarsiph, and that he had been a priest of Helio-
polis or On. Osar-siph is simply Joseph, Osar or Osiris bein substi
tuted for Jeho (Jo) or Jahveh. Joseph, it will be remembered, married
the daughter of the priest of On.

2 "VVe should have expected a samecJi instead of a sliin ; the word,
however, must have been borrowed, since we do not meet with it else
where in the Old Testament. By the side of asijpn we find teippu, tho

52 LECTURE I.

in old Hebrew and Phoenician, its form would have
more nearly approached that of Joseph. The asipu or
" diviner" plays a considerable part in the religious
literature of Babylonia, and the very phrase lit assaputi,
" the house of the oracle," is actually met with. A god
who seems to be Bel in his character of delivering oracles
through the voice of the thunder is called " the hero who
prophesies" or " divines uprightly." Although, there
fore, it is a point which cannot be proved at present, it
appears nevertheless probable that the name of Joseph
was originally identical with the Babylonian asipu, "the
god of the oracle;" and that long before the Israelitish
house of Joseph took possession of Luz, it had been a
house of Joseph in another sense and the sanctuary of a
Canaanitish oracle.1

But whether or not we are to look to Babylonia for
an explanation of the name of Joseph, there is little
doubt that the Babylonian pantheon throws light on the
names of the three first kings of Israel. Some years
ago I endeavoured to show in the pages of the Modern
Review (January, 1884), that the names by which they
are known to history, Saul and David and Solomon,
were not the names they received in childhood, but
names subsequently applied to them and current among
the people. As regards the name of Solomon, we are
actually told that this was the case ; his original name —
the name given by the Lord through Nathan — was

name of a particular class of priests whose duties were confined to |
soothsaying. It was from this word that the character which denoted j
"speech" derived its value of isip. Siptu, "incantation," was en in ;
Accadian.

i Cfc.Gen. xliv. 5

INTRODUCTORY. 53

Jedidiah, which was changed into Solomon, "the peaceful
one," when his father had "peace from all his enemies,"
and had surrounded his new capital of Jerusalem (perhaps
the city of "peace") with a single wall.1 That David's
first name was El-hanan (or Baal-hanan) has long been
suspected, since it is stated in one passage that Elhanan
the son of a Bethlehemite " slew Goliath the Gittite,
the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam,"2
while the feat is elsewhere ascribed to David; and at
the head of the thirty mighty men of David is placed
Elhanan the son of Dodo of Bethlehem, where we should
probably read " Elhanan who is Dodo" or David.3 Saul,
too, is presumably of similarly popular origin, the name
Saul, " the one asked for," being singularly appropriate to
a king for whom, we are told, the people had " asked."
Now there is a curious parallelism between the three
first kings of Israel and the three last kings of Edom
enumerated in the 36th chapter of Genesis, where we
have, I believe, an extract from the state-annals of the
Edomites. Saul had "vexed" the Edomites,4 and David
had completed the conquest; but the accession of Solomon
and the murder of Joab brought with them almost imme-

1 2 Sam. xii. 24, 25. The verses should be rendered : " She bare a
son and his name was called Solomon ; and the Lord loved him, and
sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet and called his name Jedidiah,
because of the Lord."

2 2 Sam. xxi. 19, where Ya'are, Ya'ur or Ya'ir, seems to be a cor
ruption of Jesse, and oregim, " weavers," has been repeated from the
following line. The text was already corrupt before the compilation of
1 Chron. xx. 5.

8 2 Sam. xxiii. 24. As thirty names follow that of Elhanan, he
cannot himself have been one of the thirty, and being ranked with,
them must have been their head.

4 1 Sam. xiv. 47 ; see, too, xxii. 9.

54 LECTURE I.

diately the successful revolt of Edom under Hadad, who
had married the sister of Pharaoh's queen.1 In strange
accordance with this, we find that the three last Edomite
kings mentioned in the list in Genesis were Saul, Baal-
hanan and Hadar — a name which must be corrected into
Hadad, as in Hadarezer for Hadadezer. The kings of
Edom seem to have had a predilection for assuming the
names of the divinities they worshipped. We have
among them Hadad, the son of Bedad (or Ben-Dad),
Hadad and Dad being, as we learn from the cuneiform
inscriptions, titles of the supreme Baal in Syria, whose
attributes caused the Assyrians to identify him with
their own Eimmon ; and Hadad was followed by Samlah
of Masrekah or the " Yine-lands," in whose name we
discover that of a Phoenician god recorded in a recently
found inscription as well as that of the Greek Semele.2

1 1 Kings xi. 19—25.

2 See the letters of Dr. Neubauer and myself in the Athenceum of
Sept. 12 and Sept. 26, 1885. As the worship of Dionysos, the Wine-
god, had been borrowed by the Greeks from the East, it had long been
assumed that the name of Semele must be of Phoenician extraction ;
but it was only in 1884 that a Phoenician inscription was found in a
bay to the west of the Peireeos containing the name Pen-'Samlath (" the
face of 'Samlath"). The first king of Edom mentioned in Gen. xxxvi.
is Bela the son of Beor, that is, Bileam or Balaam the son of Beor.
Dr. Neubauer has shown that Balaam is Bil-'am, " Baal is Am(mi),"
the supreme god of Ammon (as we have learned from the cuneiform
inscriptions), whose name enters into those of Jerobo-am and Rehobo-
am. An Assyrian mythological tablet (W. A. I. ii. 54, 65) informs us
that Emu (E2) was the Nergal of the Shuites on the western bank of
the Euphrates. The words with which the list of the Edomite kings
is introduced (" These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom
before there reigned any king over the children of Israel") are of course
an addition by the Hebrew excerptist. It will be noticed that the
father of the last king in the list, Hadad II. (Hadar), is not mentioned,
while, contrary to the almost universal practice of the Old Testament,

INTRODUCTORY. 55

We need not be surprised, therefore, if the name of Saul
also turns out to be that of a divinity. "We are told that
Saul came from "Eehoboth of the river" Euphrates;
and since Eehoboth means the public squares and suburbs
of a capital city, and is consequently used of Nineveh
in the book of Genesis (x. 11), we must look for the
Eehoboth of the Euphrates in Babylon. Now one of
the principal names under which the Sun-god was known
at Babylon was Savul or Sawul, which in Hebrew cha
racters would become Saul. In Saul, accordingly, I
think we may see a Babylonian deity transported to
Edom and perhaps also to Palestine.

Hadad occupied a higher position than Saul. He
was, as I have said, the supreme Baal or Sun-god, whose
worship extended southward from Carchemish to Edom
and Palestine. At Damascus he was adored under the
Assyrian name of Eimmon, and Zechariah (xii. 11) alludes
to the cult of the compound Hadad -Eimmon in the
close neighbourhood of the great Canaanitish fortress of
Megiddo. Coins bear the name of Abd-Hadad, "the
servant of Hadad," who reigned in the fourth century
at Hierapolis, the later successor of Carchemish, and,
under the abbreviated form of DMa, Shalmaneser speaks

the names of his wife and mother-in-law are given. This is explained
by 1 Kings xi. 19, where we are told that he was married to the sister
of Tahpenes the Egyptian queen. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in
identifying Tahpenes with the name of the frontier-fortress which was
known to the Greeks as Daphnae, and is now called Tel-Defeneh, so
that the introduction of the name into the text of the book of Kings
would be a marginal gloss. Mehetab-el and Me-zahab are apparently
the Semitic substitutes of Egyptian names such as the Egyptian monu
ments have made us familiar with. Me-zahab would presuppose an
Egyptian Nub, and Mr. Tomkins ingeniously suggests that Genubath,
the name of the son of Hadad, represents the Egyptian Ka-nub-ti.

56 LECTURE I.

of "the god Ddda of Aleppo" (Khalman). The abbre
viated form was that current among the nations of the
north ; in the south it was confounded with the Semitic
word which appears in Assyrian as dadu, "dear little
child." This is the word which we have in Be-dad or
Ben-Dad, " the son of Dad," the father of the Edomite
Hadad ; we have it also in the David of the Old Testa
ment. David, or Dod, as the word ought to be read,
which is sometimes written Dodo with the vocalic suffix
of the nominative, is the masculine corresponding to a
Phoenician goddess whose name means "the beloved
one," and who was called Dido by the writers of Eome.
Dido, in fact, was the consort of the Sun-god, conceived
as Tammuz, "the beloved son," and was the presiding
deity of Carthage, whom legend confounded with Elissa,
the foundress of the city. In the article I have alluded
to above, I expressed my conviction that the names of
Dodo and David pointed to a worship of the Sun-god,
under the title of "the beloved one," in southern Canaan
as well as in Phoenicia. I had little idea at the time
how soon my belief would be verified. Within the last
year, the squeeze of the Moabite stone, now in the Louvre,
has been subjected to a thorough examination by the
German Professors Socin and Smend, with the result of
correcting some of the received readings and of filling
up some of the lacunae. One of the most important dis
coveries that have been thus made is that the Israelites
of the northern kingdom worshipped a Dodo or Dod by
the side of Yahveh, or rather that they adored the
supreme God under the name of Dodo1 as well as under

1 Written iTTn in the Moabite text, where he elsewhere takes the
place of the Hebrew waw.

INTRODUCTORY. 67

that of Yahveh. Mesha, the Moabite king, in describing
the victories which his god Chemosh had enabled him to
gain over his Israelitish foes, tells us that he had carried
away from Ataroth "the arel (or altar) of Dodo and
dragged it before Chemosh," and from Nebo "the arels
(or altars) of Yahveh," which he likewise " dragged before
Chemosh." Here the arel or "altar" of Dodo is placed
in parallelism with the arels of Yahveh ; and it is quite
clear, therefore, that Dodo, like Yahveh, was a name
under which the deity was worshipped by the people of
the land. I have suggested that Dod or Dodo was an
old title of the supreme God in the Jebusite Jerusalem,
and that hence Isaiah (v. 1), when describing Jerusalem
as the tower of the vineyard the Lord had planted in
Israel, calls him D6d-i, " my beloved." We can easily
understand how a name of the kind, with such a signifi
cation, should have been transferred by popular affection
from the Deity to the king of whom it is said that " all
Israel and Judah loved him" (1 Sam. xviii. 16).

That Solomon was a divine name we have the express
testimony of the cuneiform inscriptions for asserting.
Sallimmanu, "the god of peace," was a god honoured
particularly in Assyria, where the name of more than
one famous king (Shalman-eser) was compounded with
it. As the name of Nineveh was ideographically ex
pressed by a fish within a basin of water,1 while the
name itself was connected in popular etymology with

1 The ideograph also represented the name of the goddess Nina — a
word which means "the Lady" in Sumerian — who was the daughter
of Ea the god of Eridu (W. A. I. iv. 1, 38). There was a city or sanc
tuary in Babylonia of the same name (K 4629, Rev. 8), which explains
the statement of Ktesias that Nineveh stood on the Euphrates (ap.
Diod. ii. 3).

58 LECTURE I.

the Assyrian nunu, "a fish," it is possible that the cult
of Sallimman or Solomon in Assyria was due to the fact
that he was a fish-god, perhaps Ea himself. In a list of
the gods whose images stood in the numerous temples of
Assyria (W. A. I. iii. 66, Rev. 40), mention is made of
"Sallimmanu the fish, the god of the city of Temen-
Sallim (the foundation of peace)." His worship was
carried westward at a comparatively early period, and
in the age of Shalmaneser II. the royal scribe at Sadikan,
now Arban on the Khabur, was named Sallimmanu-nunu-
sar-ilani, " Solomon the fish is king of the gods."1 So,
too, in the time of Tiglath-Pileser III. (B.C. 732) the
Moabite king was Salamanu or Solomon, a plain proof
both that the god was known in Moab, and also that in
Moab, as in Israel, the name of the god could be applied
to a man.

If a gleam of light has thus been cast by the monu
ments of Assyria and Babylonia upon the names of the
earlier kings of Israel, it is but feeble in comparison
with the illustrations they afford us of the ritual and
religious practices recorded in the Old Testament. The
ritual texts, fragmentary as they are, are numerous
among the debris of Assur-bani-pal's library, and the
references we find from time to time in the historical
inscriptions to religious rites and ceremonies give us
tantalising glimpses into the service and ceremonial of
the Assyro-Babylonian priesthood.

1 On a cylinder now in the British Museum. The inscription runs :
" The seal of Muses-Adar the scribe, the son of Adar-esses the scribe, |
the son of Sallimanu-mm-sar-ilani the scribe." Sir A. H. Layard dis- |
covered winged bulls at Arban, inscribed with the words, " The palace j
of Muses-Adar." For a representation of the seal, see George Smith's j
Chaldean Genesis (ed. Sayce), p. 97.

INTRODUCTORY. 59

In Assyria the king himself performed many of the
functions of a high-priest. Like Solomon of Israel, he
could offer sacrifice and pour out libations to the gods.
Assur-ris-ilim is entitled "the appointed of the divine
father (Bel), the priest (sangu) of Assur ;"* Assur-natsir-
pal calls himself " the appointed of Bel, the priest (sangu)
of Assur, the son of Tiglath-Adar the appointed of
Bel, the priest of Assur, the son of Eimmon-nirari the
appointed of Bel, the priest of Assur;"2 Sargon is simi
larly " the appointed of Bel, the exalted priest (NU-ES)
of Assur," as well as " the high-priest (patesi) of Assur ; "
while Nebuchadnezzar designates himself " the worship
per of Merodach, the supreme high-priest (patesi)^ the
beloved of Nebo."3 But the union of the two offices
was by no means necessary. In the far-off pre- Semitic
age there were kings of Tel-loh as well as patesis or
high-priests of Tel-loh, and the kings did not take the
title of high-priest, while the high-priests did not take
the title of king. The earliest records of Assyria went
back to a period when as yet there were no kings, but
only "high-priests of Assur;"4 and among the objects
brought from Babylonia by Dr. Hayes Ward is a barrel-
shaped weight of green basalt, on which we read : " the
palace of Nebo-sum-esir the son of Dakur, the high-
priest (patesi) of Merodach." A distinction is carefully
drawn between "the king" and "the high-priest" in
the imprecation against the Yandals of the future attached
to an old historical text in the Accadian language,5 and
the poet who embodied the Cuthsean legend of the crea-

1 W. A. I. iii. 3, 12. 2 W. A. I. iii. 3, 39.

8 W. A. I. i. 53, i. 5. * W. A. I. i. 15. 62, 63.

5 W.A.I, iv. 12. 36, 37.

60 LECTURE I.

tion in his verses concludes by saying : " Thou, whether
king, high-priest, shepherd or any one else whom God
shall call to rule the kingdom, I have made for thee this
tablet, I have inscribed for thee this record-stone, in the
city of Cutha, in the temple of 'Sulim."1 Ktesias, there
fore, was justified in making a high-priest of his Baby
lonian Belesys — a name, by the way, which appears in
the inscriptions, under the form of Balasu, as that of a
Babylonian prince in the time of Tiglath-Pileser III.2
The Semitic title of the high-priest (nisaJcJcu or issaJcJcu)
indicates that his main duty was to pour out libations

1 Patesi and NU-ES are rendered by the Assyrian nisakku and issakku.
These have nothing to do with an Aceadian nes, as Lotz supposed,
much less with nisu and ish, "a man," as Guyard suggested, but are
merely derivatives from the verb nasaku, "to pour out a libation/'
which occurs in the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gisdhubar (col. vi.
1. 4). Patesi should probably be read khattesi or khuttesi, since the
country of that name is written indifferently PA-SE-KI and PA-TE-SI-KI
(W. A. I. ii. 53, 13). The substitution of & (tig) for patesi or khattesi
in the penitential psalm (W. A. I. iv. 21, 45) seems due to a blunder
of the Semitic scribe, who read the first character (pa) as sig (see v.
19, 55). NU-ES, "the man of the temple," is a compound ideograph
of Semitic invention, which originated when false analogy had caused
the termination akku to be regarded as a separate suffix, so that the
root of nisakku was supposed to be nis or nes. The old rendering of
pates'i by " viceroy" rested on a mistake ; the word always has reference
to the worship of a god. The Nebu-sum-esir mentioned in the text,
for instance, was not the viceroy of a king, but " the high-priest of
Merodach," who lived at Babylon by the side of the king. The analogy
of nisakku has created sakkanakku, " a high-priest," from sakanu, which
is borrowed from the Aceadian sagan (W. A. I. iii. 70, 40), the Zoganes
of Berossos.

2 Arbakes is equally the name of a Median chief mentioned by
Sargon, and Sargon himself may be the Akraganes whom Ktesias makes
the last king but one of Assyria. As Schrader points out (Keilin-
schriften und Geschichtsforschung, p. 516), in the time of Ktesias, Be
lesys was the Persian governor of Syria and Assyria, and Arbakes of
Media (Xenophon, Andb. vii. 8, 25). .

INTRODUCTORY. 61

in honour of the gods, and the phrases in which the
word occurs show that he was attached to the cult of
the supreme god of the country in which he lived. At
Babylon it was Merodach from whom the high-priest
received his title ; at Nineveh it was Assur.

Under the high-priest several classes of subordinate
priests were ranged. There was the sangu, for example,
whose title interchanges at times with that of the high-
priest himself. The sangu properly signified one who
was " bound" or attached to a particular deity or his
sanctuary, who was his slave and bondsman. The name
may therefore be compared with that of the Levites, if
the latter, too, are those who were " attached" to special
places of worship. At Nineveh there was a sangu attached
to the harem which was under the protection, of Istar,
as well as one who was entitled "the strong sangu" and
who may accordingly be regarded as one of the chief
priests.1

By the side of the sangu stood thepdsisu or " anointer,"
whose duty it was to purify with oil both persons and
things. The cleansing of objects by anointing them
with oil was considered a matter of great importance •
even the stone tablets and foundation-stones of a building
are ordered to be cleansed in this way. The use of
"pure water" for washing the hands and other parts of
the body occupies a conspicuous place in the ritual texts,
and in one of them we read the following instructions in
regard to a person who is undergoing purification : 2

1 W. A. I. ii. 31. 60, 61. The remains of the palace discovered by
Layard at Arban (the ancient Sadikan) belonged, according to the
inscription on the bulls, to " Muses- Adar the priest" (sangu).

2 W.A.I. iv. 26, 40*2.

62 LECTURE I.

"Pure water give him to drink, and pour out the water
over the man; remove the root of the saffron^),1 and
offer pure wine and pure yeast, and place on the heart
the fat of a crane2 which has been brought from the
mountains, and anoint the body of the man seven times."
Another class of priests were the kali, a word borrowed
by the Semites from the Accadian Jcal, "illustrious."
The Jcalu was also termed lalaru, " the elder," a word
again borrowed from the Accadian labar, which in Sume-
rian appears in the earlier form of lagar? In the epic
of Gisdhubar, where Ea-bani(?) is describing the land
of Hades which he is doomed to enter, the lagaru and
the pdsisu, or "anointer," are mentioned along with the
isippUj or " soothsayer," and the maJchkhu, or " great
one," from the Accadian makh, in which Prof. Delitzsch
sees the "mag" or "(Bab-)mag" of the Old Testament.4
"(In the house, 0 my friend), which I must enter,"
Ea-bani is made to say, "(for me) is treasured up5 a
crown (among those who wear) crowns, who from days
of old have ruled the earth, (to whom) Anu and Bel
have given names of renown. Glory have they given
to the shades of the dead ;6 they drink the bright waters.

1 KurJcane; in Accadian, Jcur-gi-in-na. 2 KurM; Chaldee, kurWyd.

3 See Zimmern, Bab. Busspsalmen, p. 28, note 2. I may add that
the kali are the Galli or eunuch-priests of the Kappadokian goddess,
their Assyrian name having been borrowed along with the religious
rites over which they presided.

4 The makhkhu must have represented a subdivision of the isippit
since in W. A. I. ii. 51, 55, the word is the equivalent of essepuj " the
priest of the god Nibatu." Cp. W. A. I. ii. 33, 31.

5 KummvAu; kamcttu means "to keep oneself," not "to bow" (as
Zimmern and Lyon).

6 Katsuti and katsdti, literally " fleshless ones ;" compare reclaim
in Is. xiv. 9. The ideograph translated kutstsu (W, A. I. iv, 15, 38) is

INTRODUCTORY. 63

In the house, 0 my friend, which I must enter dwell
the lord1 and the lagaru, dwell the soothsayer (isippu)
and the malchJchu, dwell the anointing priest of the
abysses of the great gods, the god Etann& and the god
ISTer. (There dwells) the queen of the earth Mn-ki-gal ;
(there the Lady) of the field, the scribe of the earth,
bows before her ; (there she . . .) and makes answer in
her presence." 2

"The abysses" or " deeps" of the great gods is an
expression which requires explanation. The temples of
Babylonia were provided with large basins filled with
water and used for purificatory purposes, which resembled
" the sea" made by Solomon for his temple at Jerusalem,
and were called apsi, " deeps" or " abysses."3 It was
with these " deeps" that fhepasisu or " anointing priest,"
whose office it was to purify and cleanse, was specially
concerned. The basins doubtless stood in the open air,
in the great court within which the temple itself was
erected.

also rendered surpu, from rapu. The passage reads, dih (u) suruppu . . .
kutstsu, "lunacy, wasting fever . . . consumption." A synonym of
katsutu is tarpu (Acc.idiaii dimme, "spectre"), the Hebrew teraphim
(see Neubauer in the Academy, Oct. 30, 1886).

1 Zimmern thinks that enu, " lord," denoted a class of priests ; but
this is unlikely, unless we suppose the word to be borrowed from the
Accadian en, " an incantation" (Assyrian siptu). As, however, the
Assyrians formed enitu, "lady" (W. A. I. iii. 4, 55), from enu, this sup
position is improbable.

2 Haupt, Ntmrodepos, pp. 17, 19. In 19, 47, we must read dup-
Siurat, " female scribe."

8 The ceremonies attending the construction of a bronze bull intended
to support one of these seas, are described in W. A. I. iv. 23, No. 1.
The "sea" is stated to have been placed "between the ears of the
bull" (line 17).

64 LECTURE I.

The description of E-Saggil, the temple of Bel-Merodach
at Babylon, which has been translated by Mr. George
Smith,1 states that here at least there was a second court,
that of "Istar and Zamama," besides the great court.
Within the latter was another walled enclosure, built in
the form of a square, and containing the great ziggurrat,
or " tower," as well as the temples and chapels of a large
number of deities. This agglomeration of sacred edifices
was due to the fact that the temple of Bel was a Baby
lonian Pantheon where the images and cult of the mani
fold gods of Chaldgea were gathered together. Where
the temple was dedicated to one divinity only, there was
of course only one building.

In one particular, however, the temple of Bel-Merodach
differed from that of every other Babylonian temple with
which we are acquainted. This is in its orientation. Its
sides face the four points of the compass, whereas in the
case of the other temples it is the corners that do so.
The cause of this departure from the usual canons of
Babylonian sacred architecture has still to be discovered.

Within, the temple bore a striking likeness to that of
Solomon. At the extreme end was thepardku, or "holy
of holies," concealed by a curtain or veil from the eyes
of the profane.2 Here, according to Nebuchadnezzar,
was " the holy seat, the place of the gods who determine
destiny, the spot where they assemble together (?),3 the
shrine (parak) of fate, wherein on the festival of Zagmuku
at the beginning of the year, on the eighth and the
eleventh days, the divine king of heaven and earth, the

1 See Appendix II. 2 Hence the name pardku, Heb. parocheth. j
3 So Flemming, Die grosse Steinplatteninschri/t Nelukadnezars, \
p. 37.

INTRODUCTOEY. 65

lord of the heavens, seats himself, while the gods of
heaven and earth listen to him in fear (and) stand bowing
down before him." 1 Here, too, Herodotos tells us (i. 183),
was a golden image of the god, with a golden table in
front of it like the golden table of shewbread in the
Jewish temple.2

The little chapel of Makhir, "the god of dreams,"
discovered by Mr. Hormuzd Eassam at Balawat, near
Mosul, gives us further information about the internal
arrangement of the shrine. In this, Mr. Eassam found
a marble coffer containing two stone tablets which recorded
Assur-natsir-pal's victories and the erection of the chapel.
The coffer and its contents remind us forcibly of the
Israelitish ark with its "two tables of stone" (1 Kings
viii. 9). Before the coffer, at the north-west of the
chamber, was an altar of marble ascended by five steps,
where another stone tablet was disinterred similar to
those in the coffer. The gates that led to this temple of
Makhir were coated with plates of embossed bronze,
which are now in the British Museum. The great templo
of Bel-Merodach at Babylon was adorned in a more

1 W. A. T. i. 54, ii. 54—62.

2 There seems to be evidence that the institution of the shewbread
was known in Babylonia. In a fragment of a bilingual phrase-book
(K 4207) we read (lines 8, 9), (Ace.) mulu sagar-an-tug-a e-gur al-mur-
ra-in-u-ne, which is translated biruta bit agurri ipalla^ "the food-
provider looks down upon the house of brick." (For ipallas, see
W. A. I. iv. 17, 26, where the corresponding Accadian verb appears
as ide-minin-barren.) In W. A. I. ii. 44, 74, birutu is the rendering
of the Accadian iwr (KI-GAL), out of the ideographic representation of
which the Semitic scribes by an erroneous reading formed the word
kigattu. Now in W. A. I. iv. 13, 12, we find ina kisal makhklii kigalla
luramdta, " on the high altar mayest thou found a place of feeding,"
i.e. a table of shewbread.

66 LECTURE I.

costly way. Its cedar- work was overlaid by Nebuchad
nezzar with gold and silver, while its furniture, like that
of Solomon's temple, was of " massive gold."

The coffer of the little temple of Imgur-Bel, or Balawat,
resembled in form the arks, or "ships" as they were
termed, in which the gods and their symbols were carried
in religious processions.1 It thus gives us a fair idea of
what the Israelitish ark of the covenant must have been
like. It, too, was a small shrine of rectangular shape,
carried by means of staves passed through rings at its
four corners. It is somewhat curious that the Assyrian
ark should have assumed this shape. The name by
which it went to the last was that of "ship," a proof
that it was originally in the form, not of an ark, but of a
ship. The same transformation is observable in the
Biblical account of the Deluge as compared with that of
the cuneiform inscriptions; here also "the ship" of the
Babylonian version has become "an ark." But the fact
that the arks of the Babylonian gods were once ships ;
points to a period when the first who made use of them |
were dwellers by the sea-shore. "We are referred back j
to the ancient Chaldsean city of Eridu, on the shores of |
the Persian Gulf, from whence, as we shall see hereafter, '
the religion and religious ceremonies of pre- Semitic'
Babylonia had once spread. The gods of Eridu were)
water-gods, and, like the deities of Egypt, had each hisi
sacred ship. These ships occupied an important placej

in the Babylonian ritual; they all had special names,'

. — .

1 In Layard's Monuments of Nineveh, pi. 65, the images of the1'
gods are represented as standing upon platforms (or boats?) which ar<
carried on men's shoulders, two men supporting one end of each plat
form and two men the other.

INTRODUCTORY. -G7

and "were the visible abodes of 'the "divinities to whom
they belonged. Let us listen, for instance, to an old
hymn that was recited when a new image of the god
was made in honour of "the ship of enthronement," the
papaJch or "ark" of Merodach:

" Its helm is of cedar (?) wood ....

Its serpent-like oar has a handle of gold.

Its mast is pointed with turquoise.

Seven times seven lions of the field (Eden) occupy its deck.

The god Adar fills its cabin built within.

Its side is of cedar from its forest.

Its awning is the palm (?) wood of Dilvun.

Carrying away (its) heart is the canal.

Making glad its heart is the sunrise.

Its house, its ascent, is a mountain that gives rest to the heart.

The ship of Ea is Destiny.

Nin-gal, the princess (Dav-kina), is the goddess whose word is life.

Merodach is the god who pronounces the good name.

The goddess who benefits the house, the messenger of Ea the
ruler of the earth, even Nan-gar (the lady of work), the
bright one, the mighty workwoman of heaven, with pure
(and) blissful hand has uttered the word of life ;

' May the ship before thee cross the canal !

May the ship behind thee sail over its mouth !

Within thee may the heart rejoicing make holiday I'"1

The hymn was an heirloom from Sumerian Eridu. It
had come down from the days when Merodach was not
as yet the god of Babylon, but was the son of Ea, the
water-god of Eridu. It is written in Accadian, and no
Semitic translation is attached to it ; it is even possible
that some of the expressions used in the hymn had ceased
to be intelligible to the priests of E-Saggil who recited
it.2 At all events, the references to the ship of the deity

? 2

thai
(S-wur) in the northern dialect of Accad, has nothing to do with the

1 W. A. I. ii. 25, 9—32.

1 t t 1 f* * _1 4 */_•_!- 1* A

8 I need hardly observe that the Sumerian word Sgur, " side," *

G8 LECTURE T,

were no longer applicable in the Semitic age of Babylon.
The md or "ship" of the pre-Semitic Sumerians had
then become the papaklm or " ark" of the Semites ; helm
and oar and mast had alike disappeared, and it was no
longer required to sail across the sacred canals of the
temples, but was carried on the shoulders of men.

The festivals at which such arks were borne in pro
cession were naturally numerous in a country where
divinities innumerable were adored. The festival of
ZAG-MU-KU, mentioned by Nebuchadnezzar as having been
held at Babylon at the beginning of the year, is possibly
the Saksean feast of the classical writers, when a slave
was dressed in the robes of a king.1 The service at the
temple of Bel-Merodach which was opened by the hymn
in honour of his ark, was accompanied by another specially
commemorating the festival itself : 2

" The day the (image of the) god has been made, he has caused the
holy festival3 to be fully kept.

Semitic igaru, "a heap" ("wall"), though the scribes of Semitic Baby
lonia afterwards confounded the two words together.

1 The month, however, does not agree in the case of the two feasts.
Athenaeos (Deipn. xiv.) says : " Berossos in the first book of his Baby
lonian History states that in the llth month, called Loos, is celebrated
the feast of Sak?ea, for five days, when it is the custom that the masters
should obey their servants, one of whom is led round the house, clad
in a royal robe, and called Zoganes." The Zoganes was the Accadian
sagan, borrowed as salcanu by Semitic Babylonian (W. A. I. iii. 70, 40,
ii. 51, 31), probably from saga, "head." Sakkanakku, "high-priest,"
is a derivative.

« W. A. I. iv. 25, 39 sq.

3 Azkaru, " commemoration-feast." The corresponding Accadian udu-
sar is "a day of commemoration ;" in W. A. I. iv. 23, 1, far alone is
rendered isinnu, " festival." In K 2107, 14, it is translated sipat, "an"
incantation" or hymn ; hence we read in a fragment (R 528) : "At dawn
(repeat) a hymn in the presence of Merodach, (then) four hymns to Ea
the holy god of Eridu." Then follow the incantations or hymns.

INTRODUCTORY. 69

The god has risen among all lands.

Lift up the (nimbus of) glory, adorn thyself with heroism, 0 hero

perfect of breast,

bid lustre surround this image, establish veneration.
The lightning flashes; the festival appears like gold;1
in heaven the god has been created, on earth the god has been

created !

This festival has been created among the hosts of heaven and earth.
This festival lias issued forth from the forest of the cedar-trees.
The festival is the creation of the god, the work of mankind.
Bid the festival be fully kept for ever ;
according to the command of the valiant golden god.2
This festival is a sweet savour even when the mouth is unopened,
(a pleasant taste) when food is uneaten and water un(drunk)."

No better idea can be formed of the number and variety
of the Babylonian feasts than by reading a hemerology
of the intercalary month of Ehil, where we find that
every day is dedicated to one or other of the gods, and
certain rites and ceremonies prescribed for each.3 We

1 In the Assyrian translation, " brilliantly."

2 Accadian : " Pronounce for ever the festival completed, through
the creative message of the valiant golden god;" Assyrian : "In per
petuity for ever cause (the festival) to be complete, by the command of
the same god (who) brought (it) about."

3 With this hemerology may be compared the following liturgical
fragment (K3765):

2. On the 9th day there is no going forth ; to the sun and moon

his offerings (ninddbuf) he makes.

3. On the 10th day .... there is no going forth ....

4. On the llth day to the sun and moon his offerings he makes j

the man (is pure) as the Sun-god.

5. On the 12th day to the sun and moon his offerings he makes ;

an eclipse takes place ; there is harm (boded to his) house.

6. On the 13th day to the moon his offerings he makes. To the

moon he . . . . ; the man approaches the moon in prayer.

7. On the 14th day to the sun and moon he does not present his

sin-offering (mulcliibilti) ; ' receive my prayer' he does not say%
The moon and the sun draw near to Ami.

70 LECTURE I.

learn from the colophon that it was the seventh of a
series of tablets which must have furnished the Baby
lonian with a complete " saints' calendar" for the whole
year. So careful was he not to lose an opportunity of
keeping holiday in honour of his deities, that even the
intercalary months, which were rendered necessary from
time to time by the frequent disorder of the calendar,
were included in the series. Besides the festivals of the
regular Elul, there were consequently the festivals of a
second Elul whenever the priests deemed it needful to
insert one in the calendar. Hence, as the regular Elul
was the sixth month of the year, our tablet is the seventh
of the series.

" The month of the second Elul. The first day (is dedicated) to Anu
and Bel. A day of good luck. When during the month the moon is
seen, the shepherd of mighty nations1 (shall offer) to the moon as a
free-will offering2 a gazelle without blemish .... he shall make his
free-will offering to the Sun the mistress of the world, and to the Moon
the supreme god.3 He offers sacrifices. The lifting up of his hand
finds favour (magir) with the god.

The second day (is dedicated) to the goddesses [the two Istars]. A
lucky day. The king makes his free-will offering to the Sun the mis
tress of the \vorld, and the Moon the supreme god. Sacrifices he offers.
The lifting up of his hand he presents to the god.

8. On the 15th day to the sun and the moon he makes his offer
ings. The sun and the moon behold his offerings. His sin-
offering he does not present; 'receive my prayer' he does
not say. On this day, during the day he approaches the sun
in prayer. There is no going forth. On this day his wife is
pregnant."

1 This title refers us to the age of Kkammuragas as the period when
the work was composed.

2 Nindalu, Heb. riedhdbMh. The Accadian equivalent is " the dues
of the goddess."

3 The fact that the Sun is here a goddess shows that the hemerology
lias no connection with Sippara. It may have originated in Ur.

INTRODUCTORY. 71

The 3rd day (is) a fast-day,1 (dedicated) to Merodach and Zarpanit
A lucky day. During the night, in the presence of Merodach and Istar,
the king makes his free-will offering. He offers sacrifices. The lifting
up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 4th day (is) the feast-day2 of !Nebo (the son of Merodach). A
lucky day. During the night, in the presence of Nebo and Tasmit,
the king makes his free-will offering. He offers sacrifices. The lifting
up of his hand he presents to the god.

The 5th day (is dedicated) to the Lord of the lower firmament and
the Lady of the lower firmament. A lucky day. During the night,
in the presence of Assur3 and Mn-lil, the king makes his free-will
offering. He offers sacrifices. The lifting up of his hand finds favour
with the god.

The 6th day (is dedicated) to Rimmon and Nin-lil. A lucky dayt
The king (repeats) a penitential psalm and a litany. During the night,
before the east wind, the king makes his free-will offering to Rimmon.
He offers sacrifices. The lifting up of his hand he presents to the god.

The 7th day is a fast-day, (dedicated) to Merodach and Zarpanit. A
lucky day. A day of rest (Sabbath). The shepherd of mighty nations
must not eat flesh cooked at the fire (or) in the smoke. His clothes ho
must not change. White garments he must not put on. He must not
offer sacrifice. The king must not drive a chariot. He must not issue
royal decrees. In a secret place the augur must not mutter. Medicine
for the sickness of his body he must not apply.4 For making a curse it
is not fit. During the night the king makes his free-will offering before

1 Nulattu, borrowed from the Accadian ?iu-bad, "incomplete." The
Assyrian equivalent is yum idirtu, " day of mourning," W. A. I. ii.
32, 13. The third of the month Ab was the nubat of Merodach, ac
cording to Assur-bani-pal.

2 Yum AB-AB. AB-AB is stated to be equivalent to epu in S 1720, 16,
for which Zimmern's signification of " cooking food" is probably correct,
since the next line of the tablet speaks of " the house of the dark flesh
of Ea." Sargon laid the foundations of his new city on this day (ac
cording to his cylinder, line 59).

3 The Assyrian scribe has here substituted "Assur" for the original
Mul-lil of the text.

4 Literally, "he must not bring medicine to his disease of body;"
see Zeitschrift fur KeUscliriftforschung, ii. 1, pp. 2 — 4. Lotz translates,
but wrongly, " magus segroto maiium suam nc applicato,"

72 LECTURE I.

Merodach and Istar. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand
finds favour with the god.

The 8th day (is) the feast of ISTebo. A lucky day. During the night
the shepherd of mighty nations directs his hand to the sacrifice of a
sheep. The king makes his vow to Nebo and Tasmit. He offers
sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand he presents to the god.

The 9th day (is dedicated) to Adar and Gula. A lucky day. During
the night, in the presence of Adar and Gula, the king makes his free
will offering. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand he pre
sents to the god.

The 10th day (is dedicated) to the Mistress of the lower firmament and
the divine Judge.1 A lucky day. During the night, in the presence of
the star of the chariot and the star of the son of Istar, the king makes
his free-will offering. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand
finds favour with the god.

The llth day is the completion of the meal-offering2 to Tasmit and
Zarpanit. A lucky day. When the moon3 lifts up (its) crown of
moonlight, and (its) orb rejoices, the king makes his free-will offering
to the moon. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds
favour with the god.

The 12th day is the gift-day of Bel and Beltis. A lucky day. The
king makes his free-will offering to Bel and Beltis. He offers sacrifices.
The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 13th day (is sacred) to the Moon the supreme god. A lucky
day. The moon lifts up (its) crown of moonlight towards the earth.
On this day assuredly the king makes his free-will offering to the Sun-
god the mistress of the world, and the Moon the supreme god. He
offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 14th day (is sacred) to Beltis and Nergal. A lucky day. A
Sabbath. The shepherd of mighty nations must not eat flesh cooked
on the fire (or) in the smoke. The clothing of his body he must not
change. "White garments he must not put on. He must not offer
sacrifice, He must not drive a chariot. He must not issue royal

1 The divine judges were twenty-four stars associated with the Zodiac,
twelve being north and twelve south, according to Diodoros (ii. 30).
See W. A. I. ii. 58, 17, iii. 66, 1—9, 16, 22.

2 Maniti, Heb. minkhdh. There was another word manitu, "a couch"
(W. A. I. ii. 23, 57).

8 Arkhu, as in Hebrew, one of the few instances in which the word
i> used in Assyrian.

INTRODUCTORY. 73

decrees. (In) a secret place the augur must riot mutter. Medicine for
the sickness of his body he must not apply. For making a curse it is
not fit. In the night the king makes his free-will offering to Beltis
and Nergal. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds
favour with the god.

The 15th day (is sacred) to the (Sun the) Lady of the House of
Heaven. (A day for) making the stated offering1 to Sin the supreme
god. A lucky day. The king makes his free-will offering to Sam as
the mistress of the world, and Sin the supreme god. He offers sacrifice.
The lifting up of his hands finds favour with the god.

The 16th day (is) a fast-day to Merodach and Zarpanit. A lucky
day. The king must not repeat a penitential psalm. In the night,
before Merodach and Istar,2 the king presents his free-will offering.
He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hands finds favour with the
god.

The 17th day (is) the feast-day of Nebo and Tasmit. A lucky day.
In the night, before Nebo and Tasmit, the king presents his free-will
offering. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hands finds favour
with the god.

The 18th day (is) the festival (i&nnu) of Sin and Samas. A lucky
clay. The king presents his free-will offering to Samas the mistress of
the world, and Sin the supreme god. He offers sacrifice. The lifting
up of his hands finds favour with the god.

The 19th day (is) the white3 day of the great goddess Gula. A
lucky day. A Sabbath. The shephed of mighty nations must not eat
that what is cooked at the fire, must not change the clothing of his
body, must not put on white garments, must not offer sacrifice. The
king must not drive (his) chariot, must not issue royal decrees. The
augur must not mutter (in) a secret place. Medicine must not be
applied to the sickness of the body. For making a curse (the day) is

1 NikaJu, W. A. I. v. 11, 4, as corrected. Here the Accadian and
Sumerian equivalents are given of the Semitic nindabu, " a free-will
offering" (nddab), taklimu, "offering of shewbread," kistu, "a tribu
tary offering," and nikas'u, "a stated offering" or "korban" (Ass. kir-
bannu), nindabu and taklimu being alike translations of the Accado-
Sumerian " dues of the goddess."

2 Istar is here identified with Zarpanit.

8 Ippu, which like its synonym ellu (Heb. hdlal, comp. Mlulim,
Lev. xix. 24), has the secondary meaning of "holy." Compare tho
Latin " dies candidus."

74' LECTURE I.

not suitable. The king presents his free-will offering to Arlar and
Gula. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hands finds favour
with the god.

The 20th day (is) a day of light,1 the gift-day of Sin and Samas.
A lucky day. The king presents his free-will offering to Samas the
mistress of the world, and Sin the supreme god. He offers sacrifice.
The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 21st day (is the day for) making the stated offering to Sin and
Samas. A lucky day. A Sabbath. The shepherd of mighty nations
must not eat flesh cooked at the fire or in the smoke, must not change
the clothing of his body, must not put on white garments, must not
offer sacrifice. The king must not drive (his) chariot, must not issue
royal decrees. The augur must not mutter (in) a secret place. Medi
cine must not be applied to the sickness of the body. For making a
curse (the day) is not suitable. At dawn the king presents his free
will offering to Samas the mistress of the world, and Sin the supreme
god. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds favour with
the god.

The 22nd day (is the day for) making the stated offering to (Sin and)
Samas. (It is) the festival of the (Sun the) mistress of the Palace.
A lucky day. The king presents his free-will offering to Samas the
mistress of the world, and (Sin the supreme god). He offers sacrifice.
The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 23rd day (is) the festival of Samas and Eimmon. A lucky day.
The king presents his free-will offering to Samas and Rimmon. Ho
offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 24th day (is) the festival of the Lord of the Palace and the
Mistress of the Palace. A lucky day. The king presents his free-will
offering to the Lord of the Palace and the Mistress of the Palace. Pie
offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the
god.

The 25th day (is) the processional day2 of Bel and Beltis of Babylon.
A lucky day. In the night the king presents his free-will offering to
Bel before the star of the Foundation, and to Beltis of Babylon before
the star of the Chariot. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his
hand finds favour with the god.

The 26th day (is the day) of the establishment of the enclosing wall

2 Probably the ideographic mode of representing ippti.
8 Sadhakhu, literally " marching."

INTRODUCTORY. 75

of Ea the supreme god. A lucky day.1 The king must repeat (?) a
penitential psalm whatever (?) he may present. That day at nightfall
he makes a free-will offering to Ea the supreme god. He offers sacri
fice. The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 27th day (is the day) of the chase2 of jSergal (and) the festival
of Zikum. A lucky day. The king presents his free-will offering to
Nergal and Zikum. He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand
finds favour with the god.

The 28th day (is sacred) to Ea. (It is) the day of the resting of
Nergal. A lucky day. A Sabbath. The shepherd of great nations
must not eat flesh cooked at the fire or in the smoke, must not change
the clothing of his body, must not put on white garments, must not offer
sacrifice. The king must not drive a chariot. He must not issue royal
decrees. (In) a secret place the augur must not mutter. Medicine for
the sickness of the body must not be applied. For making a curse (the
day) is not suitable. To Ea the supreme god (the king) presents (his
i free-will offering). He offers sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds
favour with the god.

The 29th day (is) the day of the resting of the Moon-god. The day
when the spirits of heaven and earth are adored. A lucky day. The
king presents his free-will offering to Sin the supreme god. He offers
sacrifice. The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 30th day (is sacred) to Anu and Bel. A lucky day. The king
presents his free-will offering to Anu and Bel. He offers sacrifice.
The lifting up of his hand finds favour with the god.

The 2nd month of EM from the 1st to the 30th day, if the king
restores either his god or his goddess or his gods who have been expel
led, that king has the divine colossus as his god.

In the second Elul the king of the country gives a name to the temple
of the god. Whether he builds a shrine (or) .... his heart is not good.

1 Nadu amari (SUB E-MUK, like ingar, Ass. igaru, "an enclosing
wall," W. A. I. ii. 15, 36).

2 Me-lul-ti, "park" or "chase;" see W. A. I. i. 7, B2; 82. 8—16,
1, Rev. 6, where esemen is the Accadian, and melulti sa Istari the
Assyrian, equivalent of KI-E-NE-DI-INNANA ; S 704, 21 ("they enclosed
he place of melulti")] K161, Rev. iii. 7, where melulti is in paral-
elism with tarlatsi, "stall," snlmri, "cote," sulmlli, "stable," sigari,
'cage," irriri, "lair," and irsi, "bed;" S 526. 23, 25 ("the place of

the melulti i\\Q\\ dost not plant, thou dost not cause the little ones to
no out of the place of the melulti ").

76 LECTURE I.

In the second Elul the king restores the sacrifice (makhru).

[Beginning of the next tablet of the series] : — The month Tisri (is
sacred) to Samas the warrior of mankind. (These are) the command
ments of Bel-khummu (the priest) on the first day (sacred) to Anu and
Bel.

[COLOPHON.] — The 8th tablet (of the series beginning) 'The Moon
the lord of the month.' The possession of Assur-bani-pal, the king of
multitudes, the king of Assyria."

One of the most interesting facts that result from this
hemerology is, that the Sabbath was known to the Baby
lonians and Assyrians. Its institution must have gone
back to the Accadian epoch, since the term used to repre
sent it in the text is the Accadian udu khulgal, "an
unlawful day," like the Latin " dies nefastus," which is
rendered by sulum, or " rest-day," in Assyrian.1 Semitic
Babylonian, however, possessed the term Sabbath as
well, and a vocabulary explains it as being "a day of
rest for the heart."2 Like the Hebrew Sabbath, it was

1 W. A. I. iii. 56, 53.

2 W. A. I. ii, 32, 16, yum nukli libU = sdbattuv. In the new edition
of the Encydoptzdia Britannica, the reading sabattuv in this passage is
called a "textual emendation" made by Delitzsch. This, however, is
a mistake. It is the reading of the original tablet, and the published '
text was corrected by myself long before Delitzsch re-examined the
original. The Encyclopedia Britannica makes another strange state
ment in describing the Hebrew Sabbath as a day "of feasting and
good cheer." It was, on the contrary, a day of rest (Gen. ii. 2, 3 ; Ex. ,
xx. 10), "the holy day" on which the Jew was forbidden to do his
own pleasure — "not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own
pleasure, nor speaking thine own words" (Is. Iviii. 13) — in exact con
formity with the regulations of the Babylonian Sabbath. The compiler
of the text (W. A. I. ii. 32) in which sabattuv is explained as "a day
of rest of the heart," evidently regarded the word as derived from the
Accadian sa-bat, " heart-resting," and he certainly had in support of
his view the similar term nubattu, from the Accadian nu-bat. The
Assyrian verb sabatu is given as a synonym of gamaru, " to complete,"
in W.A.I, v. 28, 14.

INTRODUCTORY. 77

observed every seventh day, and was obviously connected
with the seventh-day periods of the moon.

But there were two respects in which it differed from
the Hebrew institution. Among the Israelites, "the
Sabbaths" and "the new moons" were separate from
one another ; among the Babylonians, they coincided in
so far as the Sabbath fell on the first day of the lunar
month. Consequently, since the month consisted of thirty
days, the last week contained nine days. In the second
place, the 19th of the intercalary Elul was also a Sabbath.
"Why it should have been so I cannot pretend to say.

Besides the stated festivals and Sabbaths, extraordinary
days of thanksgiving or humiliation were ordained from
time to time. In the closing years of the Assyrian
empire, when her foes were gathering around her, the
last king, Esarhaddon II., prayed to the Sun-god that
he would "remove the sin" of his people, and ordered
the Mai, or " prophet," to prescribe " the legal solemnities
(mesari isinni) for a hundred days and a hundred nights,"
from the 3rd of lyyar to the 15th of Ab.1 So, too,
Assur-bani-pal tells us, that after suppressing the revolt
in Babylonia and removing the corpses that had choked
the streets of the Babylonian cities, " by the command
of the augurs (isipputi)" he "purified their shrines and
cleansed their chief places of prayer. Their angry gods
and wrathful goddesses he soothed with supplications
and penitential psalms. He restored and established in
peace their daily sacrifices, which they had discontinued,
as they had been in former days."2

The sacrifices and offerings of the Babylonians and

1 K 4668, 2, 3. s W. A. I. v. 4, 86 sq.

78 LECTURE T.

Assyrians closely resembled those of the Israelites. Like
the latter, they were divided into sacrifices of animals,
such as oxen, sheep or gazelles, and offerings of meal
and wine. Wine was poured over the victim or the altar.
When the effeminate Assur-bani-pal had slaughtered a
battue of caged lions, he " set up over them the mighty
bow of Istar, the lady of war, presented offerings over
them, and made a sacrifice of wine over them."1 An
old magical text prays that " the sick man may be
purified by sacrifices of mercy and peace," or " peace-
offerings," as the translators of our Bible would have
expressed it,2 But although the Assyrian kings are
fond of boasting of their exploits in massacreing or tor
turing their defeated enemies in honour of Assur, we
find no allusions in the inscriptions of the historical
period to human sacrifice. That human sacrifices, how
ever, were known as far back as the Accadian era, is
shown by a bilingual text (K5139) which enjoins the
tibgal, or " chief prophet," to declare that the father must
give the life of his child for the sin of his own soul, the
child's head for his head, the child's neck for his neck,
the child's breast for his breast. The text not only
proves that the idea of vicarious punishment was already
conceived of ; it also proves that the sacrifice of children
was a Babylonian institution. In the great work on
astronomy called "The Observations of Bel,"3 we are
told that "on the high-places the son is burnt."4 The
offering was consequently by fire, as in Phoenicia.

1 W. A. I. i. 7. 2 W. A. I. ii. 18. 53, 54.

3 W.A.I. iii. 60, 162.

4 Arur, connected with arurti, " the lightning," an epithet of Rim.
mon. Delitzsch renders it " earthquake," in curione disregard of the

INTRODUCTORY. 79

The sacrifices were accompanied, sometimes by hymns
or incantations, sometimes by prayers. The prayers
were all prescribed, and a large number of them have
been preserved. Here are some examples of them : l

>-

"At dawn and in the night (the worshipper) shall bow down (ikam-
mis) before the Throne-bearer and shall speak as follows : ' 0 Throne-
bearer, giver of prosperity, a prayer !' After that he shall bow down
to Nusku and shall speak thus : * 0 Nusku, prince and king of the
secrets of the great gods, a prayer !' After that he shall bow down to
Adar and shall speak thus : * 0 Adar, mighty lord of the deep places
of the wells, a prayer !' After that he shall bow down to Gula and
shall speak thus : { 0 Gula, mother, begetter of the black-headed race,
a prayer!' After that he shall bow down to Nin-lil and shall speak
thus : * 0 Nin-lil, mighty goddess, wife of the divine Prince of Sove
reignty, a prayer !' After that he shall bow down to Mul-lil and shall
speak thus : ; 0 lord exalted, establisher of law,2 a prayer !' For three
days at dawn and at night, with face and mouth uplifted, during the
middle watch, the diviner (a sip) shall pour out libations."

The best idea, however, of what a Babylonian religious
service was like, may be gathered from the instructions
given to the priest who watched in the temple of Bel-
Merodach at Babylon on the night of the first day of the
new year.3 Part of his duty was to repeat a hymn, the
first fourteen lines of which were alternately in Accadian
and Semitic. Curiously enough, however, there was nc

character both of Rimmon and of the plain of Babylonia. The word
corresponds with the Heb. khdrar. M. Menant has pointed out several
instances in which a human sacrifice is represented on early Babylonian
cylinders (Catalogue de la Collection de Clercq, i. pp. 18, 112 sq.
In pi. xix. No. 181, is a ruder copy of a scene of human sacrifice
depicted on an early Babylonian cylinder procured by Dr. Max Olme-
falsch-Richter in Cyprus).

1 W.A.I, iv. 61, 19 sq.

2 Literally, "secret wisdom" (82. 8—16, 1, Olv. 23), with which
Belitzsch compares the Heb. tJiordh.

1 W. A. I. iv. 46, 47. The published text is very incorrect.

80

LECTURE I.

connection between the Accadian and the Semitic verses ;
while the Semitic lines were addressed to Bel-Merodach
of Babylon and Borsippa, the Accadian portion had to
do with "a god of the sanctuary," whose only resemblance
to Bel was that he is entitled " the lord of the world."
The Accadian verses are thus evidently a heirloom from
a distant past, possibly from the pre- Semi tic days of
Babylon itself, and it is more than probable that the
meaning was but little understood by the Semitic priests.
This is how the text begins :

"In the month Nisan, on the second day1 and the first hour (kasbu)
of the night, the priest2 must go and take the waters of the river in
his hand ; he must enter into the presence of Bel, and, putting on a
robe in the presence of Bel, shall address to Bel this hymn :3
' 0 Bel, who in his strength has no rival,
O Bel, king of blessedness, Bel (the lord) of the world,4
Seeking after the favour of the great gods,
Bel, who in his glance has destroyed the strong,5
Bel (the lord) of kings, light of mankind, establisher of trust ;6
O Bel, thy sceptre is Babylon, Borsippa is thy crown !
The wide heaven is the habitation of thy liver !
O lord, thine is the revelation, (and) the interpretations of visions ;
0 father (1) of lords, thee they behold the father of lords ;

1 It must bo remembered that the Babylonians, like the Jews,
reckoned the day from evening to evening.

2 The Accadian title Uru-gal, " the chief watcher," is used. The
title perhaps had reference to the nightly watch kept in the sanctuary
of Merodach in the tower of E-Saggil.

8 I omit the Accadian lines of the hymn, as I am unable to translate
them fully.

4 The preceding Accadian line is : "0 lord of the blessed sanctuary,
lord of the world!"

5 The preceding Accadian line reads : " What is the lord (doing)
now ? the lord is resting."

6 The preceding Accadian line has : " The god of the sanctuary of
mankind, the god who holds the sanctuary of man."

INTRODUCTORY. 81

tliine is the glance, (and) the seeing of wisdom ;l

they magnify (?) thee, 0 master of the strong ;

they adore (?) thee, 0 king (and) mighty prince ;

they look up to thee, show unto them mercy ;

cause them to behold the light that they may tell of thy righteous
ness.

O Bel (lord) of the world, light of the spirits of heaven, utterer of
blessings,

who is there whose mouth murmurs not of thy righteousness

or speaks not of thine exaltation and celebrates not thy glory ?

O Bel (lord) of the world, who dwellest in the temple of the Sun,
reject not the hands that are raised to thee ;

Show mercy to thy city Babylon,

to E-Saggil thy temple incline thy face,

grant the prayers of thy people the sons of Babylon !"'2

1 Or "law;" zimat urtuv, for which see W.A.I, v. 28, 92, and
iv. 15, 48 (where urta is the Accadian amma, which is terit in iv.
28, 23).

2 With this text must be compared another (unmarked at the time
I copied it), which is interesting as referring to the oracle established
within the "shrine" or "holy of holies" (parak) of the temple of Bel :
" (4) Like Bel in the shrine of the destinies the prophecy shall be
uttered (ittaspu), this shall be said : (5) ' Bel has come forth ; the king
has looked for me (yuqaa) ; (6) our lady (lilit-ni) has come forth ; tho
king has looked for thee ; (7) the lord of Babylon has issued forth;
the whole (gamli) of the world is on his face. (8) Zarpanit the prin
cess has issued forth ; his mouth has gone to meet her (?) (illalm sana
pi-su). (9) Tasmit has issued forth ; he has gone to meet her (1).
(10) Place the herbs in the hands of the goddess of Babylon; (11)

0 aSsinnu (eunuch-priest) [place] the flute (GI-BU), 0 seed-planter [place]
the seed; (12) purify me (dle-a\ purify me, and (13) fill Babylon
with pure splendour, O Nin-lil, when thou pardonest the world (kullat
tamtsiy (14) 0 Bel who (art) in the shrine, surrounded by the river
(sikhir naliri), (this) shall be said : (15) '0 Mul-lil my lord (ama) in
Nipur I saw thee ; (16) 0 my shepherd when I saw thee in the temple
of Sin the first-born, (17) I ... thy foot and . . thy hand.'" Tho
first three lines, which are mutilated, run as follows : " (1) . . . king
of the aMinnu listen ; (2) ... in the house of the supreme chief («&.
maJih) I saw you my lord (amur-lcunu ama). (3) ... he is bright and

1 saw thee."

a

82 LECTURE I.

Various special dresses were worn during the perform
ance of the religious ceremonies, and ablutions in pure
water were strongly insisted on. Seven, too, was a sacred
number, whose magic virtues had descended to the
Semites from their Accadian predecessors. When the
Chaldsean Noah escaped from the Deluge, his first act
was to build an altar and to set vessels, each containing
the third of an ephah, by sevens, over a bed of reeds,
pine-wood and thorns. Seven by seven had the magic
knots to be tied by the witch,1 seven times had the body
of the sick man to be anointed with the purifying oil.2
As the Sabbath of rest fell on each seventh day of the
week, so the planets, like the demon messengers of Anu,
were seven in number, and "the god of the number
seven" received peculiar honour.

Along with this superstitious reverence for the sacred
number, went a distinction of the animal world into clean
and unclean, or rather into food that it was lawful and

1 W. A. I. iv. 3. 5, 6.

2 W. A. I. iv. 26, 49. The deluge was said to have lasted seven days;
three groups of stars — the tikpi or " circles "(?), the masi or "double
stars," and the lu-masi or " sheep of the hero," were each seven in
number ; the gates which led to Hades were also seven ; Erech is called
the city of "the seven zones" or "stones" (W. A. I. ii. 50, 55 — 57);
and, as Lotz reminds us, seven fish-like men ascended out of the Persian
Gulf, according to Berossus, in order to teach the antediluvian Baby
lonians the arts of life. Similarly we read the following prayer in
M 1246, 5 — 12. "Incantation. — 0 strong (goddess), the violent (sam-
raid), the furious of breast (nadrata irta), -the powerful, thou beholdest
(paqata) the hostility of the enemy ; who that is not Ea has quieted
(thee) (sa la Ea mannu yunakh) 1 who that is not Merodach has paci
fied (thee) ? May Ea quiet (thee), may Merodach pacify thee ! (Con
clusion of) the spell. Incantation. — Make this prayer seven times over j
the thread (napsiti] ; stretch (it) around his name (ema sum-su), and |
live (DIL-ES)." In 0 535, 10, 14, PIL-ES is interpreted bulludh.

INTRODUCTOBY. 83

unlawful to eat. The distinction may have gone back
to an age of totemism; at all events, it prevailed as
extensively among the Babylonians and Assyrians as it
did among the adherents of the Mosaic Law. In one of
the penitential Psalms, the author expresses his contrition
for having " eaten the forbidden thing;" and if Jensen
is right in seeing the wild boar in the saJchu of the texts,
its flesh was not allowed to be eaten on the 30th of the
month Ab, nor, like that of the ox, on the 27th of
Marchesvan.1 The very mention of the Jchumzir, or
domestic pig, is avoided in the Semitic Babylonian and
Assyrian inscriptions, and reptiles were accounted as
unclean as they were among the Jews.2 It is true that
there are indications that human flesh had once been
consumed in honour of the spirits of the earth, as Prof.
Maspero has lately shown must also have been the case
in pre-historic Egypt, and a bilingual hymn still speaks
of "eating the front breast of a man;"3 but such bar-

1 "Das "Wildschwein in den assyrisch-babylonischen Inschriften,"
Zeitsclirift filr Assyriologie, i. 3, pp. 306 sq. I may add here that
circumcision was known to the Babylonians as it was to the Jews. In
a magical text (W. A. I. ii. 17, 63) it was termed arlu, the Heb. drel,
which is used in Hebrew and Arabic in a precisely opposite sense ; but
the ideographic equivalents of the Babylonian word (" the shaping of
the phallus") show what its signification in Assyrian must be.

2 K (unnumbered), 20.

3 K4609. So in S477. ii. 5, "the flesh of a man" is mentioned
along with "the flesh of the gazelle," "the flesh of the dog," "the
flesh of the wild boar," "the flesh of the ass," " the flesh of the horse,"
and "the flesh of the wild ass,"' and " the flesh of the dragon" (Usbis),
all of which it was unlawful to eat. In S 1720, 17, mention is made
of " the house of the dark (DIR) flesh of Ea," where the idea may be
similar to that of the Egyptian texts in which the ka or "double" of
the dead is described as feasting on the gods. Cp. also an unnumbered
tablet containing a hymn to the god Tutu : sagata ina samami ina ma-

G2

84 LECTURE I.

barons practices were but dimly -remembered reminis
cences of a barbarous past, and were never shared in by
the Semites. It is equally true that medicine laid con
tributions on the most unclean articles of food, including
snakes, the tongues of "black dogs" and even ordure;
but those who swallowed the compounds prescribed by
the medical faculty wore those who had already lost
their faith in the old beliefs of the people, and had
substituted the recipe of the doctor for the spells of the
exorcist and the ritual of the priest. The practice of
medicine has often been accused of antagonism to reli
gion ; whatever may be the case in these modern days,
the theology of ancient Babylonia harmonised but badly
with the prescriptions of its medical school.1

tati nisi tabarri surbata-ma \ina\ irtsitiv siru KHAR-MES-^MWM \tci\barri
siru dukhdhu tabarri atta, " Thou art exalted in heaven ; in the world
thou feedest on mankind ; thou art princely in the earth, the flesh of
their hearts thou eatest, the flesh in abundance thou eatest."

1 See my articles on "An Ancient Babylonian "Work on Medicine"
in the Zeitschrifl fur Keihchriftforscliung, ii, 1, 3.

LECTURE IL
BEL-MEBODACH OE BABYLOK

IN an inscription upon a clay cylinder brought from
Babylonia seven years ago, Cyrus is made to declare that
the overthrow of Nabonidos, the last independent Baby
lonian monarch, was due to the anger of Bel and the
other gods. Nabonidos had removed their images from
their ancient sanctuaries, and had collected them together
in the midst of Babylon. The priests maintained that
the deed had aroused the indignation of Merodach, "the
lord of the gods," who had accordingly rejected Naboni-
dos, even as Saul was rejected from being king of Israel,
and had sought for a ruler after his own heart. It was
"in wrath" that the deities had "left their shrines when
Nabonidos brought them into Babylon," and had prayed
Merodach, the divine patron of the imperial city, to "go
round unto all men wherever might be their seats."
Merodach sympathised with their wrongs ; "he visited
the men of Sumer and Accad whom he had sworn should
be his attendants," and "all lands beheld his friend."
He chose Cyrus, king of Elam, and destined him by
name for the sovereignty of Chalda3a. Cyrus, whom
the Hebrew prophet had already hailed as the Lord's
Anointed, was thus equally the favourite of the supreme
Babylonian god. " Merodach, the great lord, the restorer

86 LECTURE II.

of his people," we are told, " beheld with joy the deeds
of his vicegerent who was righteous in hand and heart.
To his city of Babylon he summoned his march, and he
bade him take the road to Babylon ; like a friend and a
comrade he went at his side." A single battle decided
the conflict: the Babylonians opened their gates, and
" without fighting or battle," Cyrus was led in triumph
into the city of Babylon. His first care was to show his
gratitude towards the deities who had so signally aided
him. Their temples were rebuilt, and they themselves
were restored to their ancient seats.

"With all the allowance that must be made for the
flattery exacted by a successful conqueror, we must con
fess that this is a very remarkable document. It is
written in the Babylonian language and in the Baby
lonian form of the cuneiform syllabary, and we may
therefore infer that it was compiled by Babylonian scribes
and intended for the perusal of Babylonian readers. Yet
we find the foreign conqueror described as the favourite
of the national god, while the last native king is held up
to reprobation as the dishonourer of the gods. It is im
possible not to compare the similar treatment experienced
by Nebuchadnezzar and the native Jewish kings respec
tively at the hands of Jeremiah. The Jewish prophet
saw in the Chaldsean invader the instrument of the God
of Judah, just as the Babylonian scribes saw in Cyrus
the instrument of the god of Babylon ; and the fall of the
house of David is attributed, just as much as the fall of
Nabonidos, to divine anger.

It is true that the reasons assigned for the divine
anger are not the same in the two cases. But the cause
of the indignation felt by the gods of Chaldsoa against

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 87

Xabonidos offers a curious illustration of the words ad
dressed by the Eab-shakeh of Sennacherib to the people
of Jerusalem. "If ye say unto me," he declared, " we
trust in the Lord our God ; is not that he whose high-
places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and
hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, ye shall worship
before this altar in Jerusalem ?" The destruction of the
local cults, the attempt to unify and centralise religious
worship, was to the Bab-shaken, as it was to the Baby
lonian scribes, and doubtless also to many of the Jews in
the time of Hezekiah, an act of the grossest impiety.

An annalistic tablet, drawn up not long after the con
quest of Babylonia by Cyrus, hints that before making
his final attack on the country, the Elamite prince had
been secretly aided by a party of malcontents in Chaldsea
itself. It is at all events significant that as soon as the
army of Nabonidos was defeated, the whole population at
once submitted, and that even the capital, with its almost
impregnable fortifications, threw open its gates. The
revolts which took place afterwards in the reigns of
Dareios and Xerxes, and the extremities endured by
the Babylonians before they would surrender their city,
prove that their surrender was not the result of cowardice
or indifference to foreign rule. The great mass of the
people must have been discontented with Nabonidos
and anxious for his overthrow.

The anger of Merodach and the gods, in fact, was but
a convenient way of describing the discontent and anger
of an important section of the Babylonians themselves.
Nabonidos did not belong to the royal house of Nebu
chadnezzar; he seems to have raised himself to the
throne by means of a revolution, and his attempt at

88 LECTURE II.

centralisation excited strong local animosities against
him. Eeligion and civil government were so closely
bound up together, that civil centralisation meant reli
gious centralisation also ; the surest sign that the cities
of Babylonia had been absorbed in the capital was that
the images of the gods whose names had been associated
with them from time immemorial were carried away to
Babylon. The cities lost their separate existence along
with the deities who watched over their individual
fortunes.

The removal of the gods, however, implied something
more than the removal of a number of images and the
visible loss of local self-government or autonomy. Each
image was the centre of a particular cult, carried on in
a particular temple in a particular way, and entrusted
to the charge of a special body of priests. It was no
wonder, therefore, that the high-handed proceedings of
Nabonidos aroused the enmity of these numerous local
priesthoods, as well as of all those who profited in any
way from the maintenance of the local cults. Most of the
cities which were thus deprived of their ancestral deities
were as old as Babylon; many of them claimed to be
older; while it was notorious that Babylon did not become
a capital until comparatively late in Babylonian history.
The Sun-god of Sippara, the Moon-god of Ur, were alike
older than Merodach of Babylon. Indeed, though in
the age of Nabonidos the title of Bel or "lord" had
come to be applied to Merodach specially, it was known
that there was a more ancient Bel — Belitanas, "the
elder Bel,'- as the Greeks wrote the word — > whose wor
ship had spread from the city of Jaipur, and who formed
one of the supreme triad of Babylonian gods.

BEL-MEHODACH OF BABYLON. 89

Up to the last, Babylonian religion remained local.
It was this local character that gives us the key to
its origin and history, and explains much that would
otherwise seem inconsistent and obscure. The endeavour
of JSTabonidos to undermine its local character and to
create a universal religion for a centralised Babylonia,
was deeply resented by both priests and people, and
ushered in the fall of the Babylonian empire. The funda
mental religious idea which had underlain the empire
had been the supremacy of Merodach, the god of Babylon,
over all other gods, not the absorption of the deities of
the subject nations into a common cult. The policy of
Nabonidos, therefore, which aimed at making Merodach,
not primus inter pares, but absolute lord of captive or
vassal deities, shocked the prejudices of the Babylonian
people, and eventually proved fatal to its author. In
Cyrus, accordingly, the politic restorer of the captive popu
lations and their gods to their old homes, the priests and
worshippers of the local divinities saw the pious adherent
of the ancient forms of faith, and the real favourite of
Merodach himself. Merodach had not consented to the
revolutionary policy of Nabonidos ; he had, on the con
trary, sympathised with the wrongs of his brother gods
in Babylonia and throughout the world, and had thus
deserted his own city and the renegade monarch who
ruled over it.

In all this there is a sharp contrast to the main reli
gious conception which subsequently held sway over the
Persian empire, as well as to that which was proclaimed
by the prophets of Judah, and in the reforms of Hezekiah
and Josiah was carried out practically by the Jewish
kings. The Ahura-mazda whom Dareios invokes on the

90 LECTURE II.

rock of Behistun is not only the lord of the gods, he is a
lord who will not brook another god by his side. The
supreme god of the Persian monarch is as absolute as
the Persian monarch himself. In the Persian empire
which was organised by Dareios, centralisation became
for the first time a recognised and undisputed fact, and
political centralisation went hand-in-hand with religious
centralisation as well. In Judah, a theocracy was esta
blished on the ruins of the old beliefs which had con
nected certain localities with certain forms of divinity,
and which found such naive expression in the words of
David to Saul (1 Sam. xxvi. 19): " They have driven me
out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord,
saying, Go, serve other gods." The destruction of the
high -places and the concentration of the worship of
Yahveh in Jerusalem, was followed by the ever-increasing
conviction that Yahveh was not only a jealous God who
would allow none other gods besides Himself; He was
also a God who claimed dominion over the whole world.
Now it was precisely this conception which the Baby
lonians, at least as a people, never attained. Nebuchad
nezzar may invoke Merodach as "the lord of the gods,"
"the god of heaven and earth," "the eternal, the holy,
the lord of all things," but he almost always couples
him with other deities — Nebo, Sin or Gula — of whom
he speaks in equally reverential terms. Even Nabonidos
uses language of Sin, the Moon-god, which is wholly
incompatible with a belief in the exclusive supremacy of
Merodach. He calls him " the lord of the gods of heaven
and earth, the king of the gods and the god of gods,
who dwell in heaven and are mighty." Merodach was,
in fact, simply the local god of Babylon. Events had

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 91

raised Babylon first to the dignity of the capital of
Babylonia, and then of that of a great empire, and its
presiding deity had shared its fortunes. It was he who
had sent forth its people on their career of conquest ; it
was to glorify his name that he had given them victory.
The introduction of other deities on an equal footing
with himself into his own peculiar seat, his own special
city, was of itself a profanation, and quite sufficient to
draw upon Nabonidos his vindictive anger. The Moon-
god might be worshipped at Ur ; it was out of place to
offer him at Babylon the peculiar honours which were
reserved for Merodach alone.

Here, then, is one of the results of that localisation of
| religious worship which was characteristic of Babylonia.
Nabonidos not only offended the priests and insulted the
gods of other cities by bringing their images into Babylon,
he also in one sense impaired the monopoly which the
local deity of Babylon enjoyed. He thus stirred up
angry feelings on both sides. Had he himself been free
from the common belief of the Babylonian in the local
character of his gods, he might have effected a revolution
similar to that of Hezekiah ; he had, however, the super
stition which frequently accompanies antiquarian instincts,
and his endeavour to make Babylon the common gather
ing-place of the Babylonian divinities was dictated as
much by the desire to make all of them his friends as by
political design.1

1 It must be remembered that the attempt of Nabonidos was essen
tially different from the mere gathering of the gods of Babylonia into
the great temple of Merodach, which Nebuchadnezzar had made a kind
of Chaldasan Pantheon. Here they assumed a merely subordinate place
they were the attendants and servitors of the god of Babylon, and their

92 LECTURE II.

"Now who was this Merodach, this patron -god of
Babylon, whose name I have had so often to pronounce ?
Let us see, first of all, what we can learn about him
from the latest of our documents, the inscriptions of
Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. In these, Merodach
appears as the divine protector of Babylon and its inha
bitants. He has the standing title of Bilu or " lord,"
which the Greeks turned into B^Aos, and which is the
same as the Baal of the Old Testament. The title is
frequently used as a name, and is, in fact, the only name
under which Merodach was known to the Greeks and
Romans. In the Old Testament also it is as Bel that he
comes before us. When the prophet declares that "Bel
boweth down" and is " gone into captivity," he is refer
ring to Merodach and the overthrow of Merodach's city.
To the Babylonian, Merodach was pre-eminently "the
Baal" or " lord," like the Baalim or " lords " worshipped
under special names and with special rites in the several
cities of Canaan.

The temple or "tomb" of Belos, as it was also called
by the Greeks, was one of the wonders of the world.
Herodotos, quoting probably from an earlier author,
describes it in the following terms :

" The temple of Zeus Belos, with bronze gates which remained up to
my time, was a square building two furlongs every way. In the middle

shrines and chapels were ranged humbly round his lofty tower. As
Nebuchadnezzar himself says, they here "listened to him in reverence
and stood bowing down before him." Kabonidos, on the other hand,
endeavoured to transplant the local cults of the deities, along with their
time-honoured images, to the capital city, to place them there on a '
footing of equality with Merodach, and so to defraud him of his privi- j
leges ; while at the same time he removed the other deities from the !
localities where alone they could be properly adored.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 93

of the temple was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and
breadth, and upon this tower another tower had heen erected, and upon
that again another, and so on for eight towers. And the ascent to them
was by an incline which wound round all the towers on the outside.
About the middle of the incline are a resting-place and seats, where
those who ascend may sit and rest. In the topmost tower is a large
shrine, within which is a large and well-appointed couch, with a golden
table at its side. But no image is set up there, nor does any one pass
the night there except a single woman, a native of the country, whom
the god selects for himself from among all the inhabitants, as is asserted
by the Chaldaeans, the priests of the god. They further say, though I
cannot believe it, that the god himself visits the shrine and takes his
rest upon the couch .... There is another shrine below belonging to
this Babylonian temple, and containing a great statue of Zeus [Belos]
of gold in a sitting posture, and a great golden table is set beside it.
The pedestal and chair of the statue are of gold, and, as the Chaldseans
used to say, the gold was as much as 800 talents in weight. Outside
the shrine is a golden altar. There is also another great altar upon
which full-grown sheep are sacrificed, for upon the golden altar only
sucklings are allowed to be offered. Upon the larger altar also the
Chaldaeans burn each year a thousand talents of frankincense at the
time when they keep the festival of the god. In this part of the
temple there was still at that time a figure of a man twelve cubits
high, of solid gold."

It is clear from this description that the great temple
of Babylon resembled a large square enclosure formed
by huge walls of brick, within which rose a tower in
eight stages. Below the tower was a shrine or temple,
and outside it two altars, the smaller one of gold for
special offerings, while the larger one was intended for
the sacrifice of sheep as well as for the burning of
incense.1

"We learn a good deal about this temple from the
inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar, which show that although

1 Similarly in Solomon's temple there were two altars, one for larger
and the other for smaller offerings (1 Kings viii. 64).

94 LECTURE IT.

Herodotos was correct in his general description of the
building, he has made mistakes in the matter of details.
The temple itself stood on the east side of Babylon, and
had existed since the age of Khammuragas (B.C. 2250),
and the first dynasty which had made Babylon its capital.
It bore the title of E-Sagila or E-Saggil, an Accadian
name signifying " the house of the raising of the head."1
Its entrance also bore the Accadian title of Ka-khilibu,
which Nebuchadnezzar renders " the gate of glory." He
says of it : " Ka-khilibu, the gate of glory, as well as
the gate of E-Zida within E-Sagila, I made as brilliant
as the sun. The holy seats, the place of the gods who
determine destiny, which is the place of the assembly
(of the gods), the holy of holies of the gods of destiny,
wherein on the great festival (Zagmuku) at the begin
ning of the year, on the eighth and the eleventh days
(of the month), the divine king (Merodach), the god of
heaven and earth, the lord of heaven, descends, while
the gods in heaven and earth, listening to him with reve-

1 Nasu sa resi (W. A. I. ii. 26, 59) ; also saqu sa risi, "top of the
head" (W. A. I. ii. 30, 3), and risdn datum, "of the lofty head" (ii.
30, 14). In W. A. I. ii. 15, 45, saggil is rendered by the Assyrian
zabal, the Heh. zelwl, which is used of Solomon's temple in 1 Kings
viii. 13, where, as Guyard has shown, the translation should be "house
of exaltation." In W. A. I. ii. 7, 26, it is rendered by the Assyrian
dindnu ; and in ii 7, 52, and 28, 42, gar saggilla is rendered by frik-
Iturutu andpukhu, both of which mean "an enclosed place" or "locked-
up shrine," accessible only to the chief priest. In M 242, 11, dinanu,
which probably means "a stronghold," is the equivalent of gar saggil;
and in S. 949, Rev. 4, we read : "My shrine (puJchu) which Ea has
made .... my stronghold (?) (dinanu) which Merodach has created."
In the list of Babylonian kings in which the meaning of their names
is explained, Es-Guzi appears as the earlier Sumerian title of E-Saggil.
Guzi, like saggil, is interpreted saqu sa risi and nasu sa resi (W. A. I.
ii. 30, 4 ; 26, 58).

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 95

rential awe and standing humbly before him, determine
therein a destiny of long-ending days, even the destiny
of my life; this holy of holies, this sanctuary of the
kingdom, this sanctuary of the lordship of the first-born
of the gods, the prince, Merodach, which a former king
had adorned with silver, I overlaid with glittering gold
and rich ornament."1 Just within the gate was the
"seat" or shrine of the goddess Zarpanit, the wife of
Merodach, perhaps to be identified with that Succoth-
benoth whose image, we are told in the Old Testament,
was made by the men of Babylon.2

E-Zida, "the firmly-established temple," was the chapel
dedicated to Nebo, and derived its name from the great
temple built in honour of that deity at Borsippa. As
Nebo was the son of Merodach, it was only fitting that
his shrine should stand within the precincts of his father's
temple, by the side of the shrine sacred to his mother
Zarpanit. It was within the shrine of Nebo, the god of
prophecy, that iheparakku, or holy of holies, was situated,
where Merodach descended at the time of the great fes
tival at the beginning of the year, and the divine oracles
were announced to the attendant priests. The special
papaJcha or sanctuary of Merodach himself was separate
from that of his son. It went by the name of E-Kua,
"the house of the oracle,"3 and probably contained the

1 See Flemming, Die grosse Steinplatteninsclirift Nebukadnezars ii.
(Gottingen, 1883).

2 For a description of the great temple of Babylon, see George Smith's
account of the inscription concerning it quoted in the Appendix.

3 Bit-assaputi, for which the Semitic translator in W. A. I. ii. 15, 4,
erroneously gives icssabi, through a confusion of kuay " oracle," with
hue, "to sit." In ii. 15, 5, assaputu, or "oracle," is given as a render
ing of the Accadian namga or nagga (AN) Kuay " the oracle of the god

96 LECTURE IT.

golden statue of Eel mentioned by Herodotos. Nebu
chadnezzar tells us that he enriched its walls with " glit
tering gold." Beyond it rose the stately ziggurat^ or
tower of eight stages, called E-Temen-gurum, "the
house of the foundation-stone of heaven and earth." As
was the case with the other towers of Babylonia and
Assyria, its topmost chamber was used as an observatory.
No temple was complete without such a tower ; it was to
the Babylonian what the high-places were to the inha
bitants of a mountainous country like Canaan. It takes
us back to an age when the gods were believed to dwell
in the visible sky, and when therefore man did his best
to rear his altars as near to them as possible. " Let us
build us a city and a tower," said the settlers in Babel,
" whose top may reach unto heaven."

The Babylonian Bel, accordingly, was Merodach, who
watched over the fortunes of Babylon and the great
temple there which had been erected in his honour. He
was not the national god of Babylonia, except in so far
as the city of Babylon claimed to represent the whole of
Babylonia ; he was simply the god of the single city of
Babylon and its inhabitants. He was but one Baal out
of many Baalim, supreme only when his worshippers
were themselves supreme. It was only when a Nebu
chadnezzar or a Khammuragas was undisputed master of
Babylonia that the god they adored became " the prince
of the gods." But the other gods maintained their

Kua." In ii. 62, 41, ma Kua is explained to be "the ship of Mero
dach." Kua is represented ideographically by the character KHA, which
was pronounced Jcua when signifying "to proclaim" (nabu) or "an
nounce an oracle." Merodach was entitled Kua as "god of the oracle"
whose "prophet" and interpreter was Nebo. For asapu and asip, \
"the diviner" or "oracle-giver," see above, p. 51.

BEL-MEROPACH OF BABYLON. 97

separate positions by his side, and in their own cities
would have jealously resented any interference with
their ancient supremacy. As we have seen, Nabonidos
brought upon himself the anger of heaven because he
carried away the gods of Marad and Kis and other towns
to swell the train of Merodach in his temple at Babylon.
We can now therefore appreciate at its true value the
language of Nebuchadnezzar when he speaks thus of his
god:

" To Merodach, my lord, I prayed ; I began to him my petition ; the
word of my heart sought him, and I said : ' 0 prince that art from
everlasting, lord of all that exists, for the king whom thou lovest,
whom thou callest by name, as it seems good unto thee thou guidest
his name aright, thou watchest over him in the path of righteousness !
I, the prince who obeys thee, am the work of thy hands ; thou Greatest
me and hast entrusted to me the sovereignty over multitudes of men,
according to thy goodness, 0 lord, which thou hast made to pass over
them all. Let me love thy supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divi
nity exist in my heart, and give what seemeth good unto thee, since
thou maintainest my life.' Then he, the first-born, the glorious, the
first-born of the gods, Merodach the prince, heard my prayer and
accepted my petition."1

Once more :

" To Merodach, my lord, I prayed and lifted up my hand : * O
Merodach, (my) lord, first-born of the gods, the mighty prince, thou
didst create me, and hast entrusted to me the dominion over multitudes
of men ; as my own dear life do I love the height of thy court ; among
all mankind have I not seen a city of the earth fairer than thy city of
Babylon. As I have loved the fear of thy divinity and have sought
after thy lordship, accept the lifting up of my hands, hearken to my
petition, for I the king am the adorner (of thy shrine), who rejoices
thy heart, appointed a royal priest, the adorner of all thy fortresses.
By thy command, 0 Merodach, the merciful one, may the temple I
have built endure for ever, and may I be satisfied with its fulness.'"2

1 From the East India House Inscription, Col. i. 52 — ii. 5.

2 Col. ix. 45— x. 5.

n

98 LECTURE II.

Here Merodach, it will be observed, though "lord of
all that exists," is nevertheless only the first-born of the
gods. There were gods older than he, just as there were
cities older than Babylon. He could not therefore be
absolute lord of the world ; it was only within Babylon
itself that this was the case; elsewhere his rule was
shared with others. Hence it was that while Nebuchad
nezzar as a native of Babylon was the work of his hands,
outside Babylon there were other creators and other lords.
This fact is accentuated in an inscription of Nabonidos,
belonging to the earlier part of his reign, in which
Merodach is coupled with the Moon-god of Ur and placed
on an equal footing with him.

One of the epithets applied by Nebuchadnezzar to
Merodach is that of riminu, or " merciful." It is indeed
a standing epithet of the god. Merodach was the inter
cessor between the gods and men, and the interpreter of
the will of Ea, the god of wisdom. In an old bilingual
hymn he is thus addressed:1 "Thou art Merodach, the
merciful lord who loves to raise the dead to life." The
expression is a remarkable one, and indicates that the
Babylonians were already acquainted with a doctrine of
the resurrection at an early period. Merodach's attribute
of mercy is coupled with his power to raise the dead.
The same expression occurs in another of these bilingual
hymns, which I intend to discuss in a future Lecture.2
The whole hymn is addressed to Merodach, and was
doubtless used in the religious services of E-Sagila. The
beginning and end are unfortunately lost. "Where tho
hymn first becomes legible, we read :

1 W. A, I. iv. 19. 1. 11 2 W< A. I. iv. 29, 1.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 99

" (Tliou art) the king of the land, the lord of the world !
O first-born of Ea, omnipotent over heaven and earth.1
0 mighty lord of mankind, king of (all) lands,
(Thou art) the god of gods,

(The prince) of heaven and earth who hath no rival,
The companion of Anu and Bel (Mul-lil),
The merciful one among the gods,
The merciful one who loves to raise the dead to life,
Merodach, king of heaven and earth,
King of Babylon, lord of ^-sagila,

King of E-Zida, king of E-makh-tilla (the supreme house of life),
Heaven and earth are thine !
The circuit of heaven and earth is thine,
The incantation that gives life is thine,
The breath2 that gives life is thine,
The holy writing3 of the mouth of the deep is thine :
Mankind, even the black-headed race (of Accad),4
All living souls that have received a name, that exist in the world,
The four quarters of the earth wheresoever they are,
All the angel-hosts of heaven and earth
(Regard) thee and (lend to thee) an ear."

It is impossible to read this hymn without being struck
by the general similarity of tone that exists between it

1 Accadian, " filling heaven and earth."

2 Ivat, Heb. Khavvdh, or "Eve."

3 Musaru, perhaps the " Musaros Cannes" of Ber6ssos. Ea, the god
of the deep and of the city of Eridu, was the Cannes of Berossos, and
not only the god of wisdom and author of Babylonian culture, but him
self a writer of books (see W. A. I. iv. 55, 7), which proceeded as it were
out of his mouth.

4 The precise meaning of this expression, which is frequent in the
hymns, is uncertain. It may refer to the custom of wearing long black
hair, though in this case we should have expected the phrase to be
"black-haired" rather than "black-headed." As, however, M. Dieu-
lafoy's excavations on the site of Susa have brought to light enamelled
bricks of the Elamite period on which a black race of mankind is
portrayed, it may mean that the primitive JSumerian population of
Chaldsea was really black-skinned.

H2

100 LECTURE II.

and another hymn which is addressed to the Sun-god.
Let us hear what the latter has to say to us :l

" 0 lord, the illuminator of darkness, thou that openest the face

of the sick !

Merciful god, planter of the lowly, supporter of the weak,
Unto thy light look the great gods,
The spirits of the earth all behold thy face.
The language of hosts as one word thou directest,
Smiting their heads they behold the light of the midday sun.
Like a wife thou behavest thyself, cheerful and rejoicing,
Yea, thou art their light in the vault of the far-off sky.
In the broad earth thou art their illumination.
Men far and wide behold thee and rejoice.
The mighty gods have smelled a sweet savour,
The holy food of heaven, the wine (of the sacrifice) ....
Whosoever has not turned his hand to wickedness ....
They shall eat the food (he offers, shall receive the sacrifice he

makes ?)."

Like Merodach, the Sun-god also is u the merciful god."
Like Merodach, too, it is to him that gods and men alike
turn their gaze. Even the power of Merodach of raising
the dead to life is ascribed to him. A hymn to Samas
the Sun-god begins with the following words :

" 0 Sun-god, king of heaven and earth, director of things above

and below,
0 Sun-god, thou that clothest the dead with life, delivered by thy

hands,

Judge unbribed, director of mankind,

Supreme is the mercy of him who is the lord over difficulty,
Bidding the child and offspring come forth, light of the world,
Creator of all thy universe, the Sun-god art thou."2

May we not conclude, then, that originally Merodach
also was a solar deity, the particular Sun-god, in fact,
whose worship was carried on at Babylon ?

1 W. A. I. iv. 19, 2. 2 S 947, Obv. 3—8.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 101

The conclusion is verified by the express testimony of
the ritual belonging to Merodach's temple E-Sagila. Here
we read that

" In the month Nisan, on the second day, two hours after nightfall,
the priest must come and take of the waters of the river, must enter
into the presence of Bel ; and putting on a stole in the presence of
Bel, must say this prayer : ' 0 Bel, who in his strength has no equal 1
O Bel, blessed sovereign, lord of the world, seeking after the favour of
the great gods, the lord who in his glance has destroyed the strong, lord
of kings, light of mankind, establisher of faith ! 0 Bel, thy sceptre is
Babylon, thy crown is Borsippa, the wide heaven is the dwelling-place
of thy liver . . . . O lord of the world, light of the spirits of heaven,
utterer of blessings, who is there whose mouth murmurs not of thy
righteousness, or speaks not of thy glory, and celebrates not thy domi
nion 1 0 lord of the world, who dwellest in the temple of the Sun,
reject not the hands that are raised to thee ; be merciful to thy city
Babylon, to E-Sagila thy temple incline thy face ; grant the prayers of
thy people the sons of Babylon.'"1

Nothing can be more explicit than the statement that
E-Sagila, the temple of Merodach, was also the temple
of the Sun. We thus come to understand the attributes
that are ascribed to Merodach and the language that is
used of him. He is " the light of the spirits of heaven,"
even as the Sun- god, in the hymn I quoted just now, is
" the illuminator of darkness" whose face is beheld by
the spirits of the earth. The wide heaven is naturally
his dwelling-place, and he raises the dead to life as the
sun of spring revivifies the dead vegetation of winter.

The part that he plays in the old mythological poems,
in the poems, that is, which embody the ancient myths
and legends of Babylonia, is now fully explained. One
of the most famous of these was the story of the combat
between Merodach and Tiamat, the dragon of darkness

1 W. A. I. iv. 46. For a fuller account of this hymn, see above, p. 80.

102 LECTURE II.

and chaos. Meroclacli advances to the fight armed with
a club and bow which Ami had placed in his hand and
which subsequently became a constellation, as well as
with his own peculiar weapon which hung behind his
back. It was shaped like a sickle, and is the apirrj or
Jchereb with which Greek mythology armed the Asiatic
hero Perseus. The struggle was long and terrible.
Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow the god, but he
thrust a storm- wind down her throat, and the monster
was burst asunder, while her allies fled in terror before
the victorious deity. The combat is represented in stone
in one of the Assyrian bas-reliefs now in the British
Museum. There we can see the demon as she appeared
to the Assyrians, with claws and wings, a short tail, and
horns upon the head. When we remember the close
parallelism that exists between this conflict of Merodach
with Tiamat, and the war recorded in the Apocalypse
between Michael and " the great dragon," it is difficult
not to trace in the lineaments of Tiamat the earliest por
traiture of the mediaeval devil.

Another myth in which Merodach again appears as
champion of the bright powers of day in their eternal
struggle against night and storm, is the myth which
describes in but thinly- veiled language the eclipse of the
moon. We are there told how " the seven wicked spirits,
the seven ministers of storm and tempest, who had been
created in the lower part of heaven," assailed the Moon-
god as he sat in his appointed seat. His comrades, the
Sun-god and the Evening Star whom " Bel" had enjoined
to share with him the sovereignty of the " lower heaven"
or visible sky, fled from before the coming attack, and Sin,
the Moon-god, was left alone to face his enemies. But

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 103

"Eel" beheld "the eclipse" of the lord of night, and
Merodach was sent to rescue him and restore once again
the light of the moon. Arrayed in " glistening armour,"
with a helmet of " light like fire" upon his head, he went
forth accordingly against the powers of darkness, and the
battle ended in his favour, like that against the dragon.
The Eel of this legend, who has settled the places of
the Sun and the Moon in the sky, is not the Eabylonian
Eel, but the older Bel of Nipur, from whom Merodach,
the Eel of Eabylon, had afterwards to be distinguished.
The Accadian original of the poem belongs to a very
early epoch, before the rise of Babylon, when the supreme
Eel of the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia was still the
god whom the Accadians called Mul-lilla, " the lord of
the lower world." This Eel or Mul-lilla fades into the
background as the Semitic element in Eabylonian religion
became stronger and the influence of Babylon greater,
though the part that he played in astronomical and cos-
mological lore, as well as his local cult at Mpur, kept
his memory alive ; while the dreaded visitants of night,
the demoniac lilu and lilat or lilith^ from the lower world,
preserved a faint memory of the spirits of which he had
once been the chief. One by one, however, the attributes
that had formerly attached to the older Bel were absorbed
by the younger Eel of Eabylon. It was almost as it was
in Greece, where the older gods were dethroned by their
own offspring ; in the Babylonia of Nebuchadnezzar and
Nabonidos, it was the younger gods — Merodach, Sin and
Samas — to whom vows were the most often made and
prayer the most often ascended. Such was the latest
result of the local character of Babylonian worship : the
younger gods were the gods of the younger Eabylonian

104

LECTURE II.

cities, and the god of Babylon, though he might be
termed "the first-born of the gods," was in one sense
the youngest of them all.

The title, however, " first-born of the gods" was of
the same nature as the other title, " prince of the world,"
bestowed upon him by his grateful worshippers. It
meant little else than that Babylon stood at the head of
the world, and that its god must therefore be the first
born, not of one primaeval deity, but of all the primaeval
deities acknowledged in Chaldsea. According to the
earlier faith, he was the first-born of Ea only. Ea was
god of the deep, both of the atmospheric deep upon
which the world floats, and of that watery deep, the
Okeanos of Homer, which surrounds the earth like a
coiled serpent. All streams and rivers were subject to
his sway, for they flowed into that Persian Gulf which
the ignorance of the primitive Chaldsean imagined to be
the ocean-stream itself. It was from the Persian Gulf
that tradition conceived the culture and civilisation of
Babylonia to have come, and Ea was therefore lord of
wisdom as well as lord of the deep. His son Merodach
was the minister of his counsels, by whom the commands
of wisdom were carried into practice. Merodach was
thus the active side of his father Ea ; to use the language
of Gnosticism, he was the practical activity that emanates
from wisdom.

Ea, however, was not the god of Babylon, nor was
his name of Semitic origin. He watched over the des
tinies of "the holy city" of Eridu, now Abu-Shahrein,
which stood in early days on the very shores of the
Persian Gulf. How Merodach came to be regarded as
his son we can only guess. Perhaps Babylon had been

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 305

a colony of Eridu ; perhaps it was from Eridu that the
culture associated with the name of Ea first made its
way to Babylon. We must be content with the fact
that from time immemorial Merodach had been the first
born of Ea, and that therefore between Eridu and Babylon
a very close connection must have existed in pre-historic
times.

Was Merodach himself an Accadian or a Semitic deity ?
The names of the kings belonging to the first dynasty of
Babylon are mostly Semitic ; it might therefore be sup
posed that the deity they worshipped was Semitic also.
And so undoubtedly was the Merodach of the historical
age, the great Bel or Baal of Babylon. But we must
remember that the foundation of Babylon went back
into the dim night of the past far beyond the era of its
first dynasty of Semitic kings, and that its very name
was but a translation of the older Ka-dimira, " gate of
the god." The temple of Merodach, moreover, bore, up
to the last, not a Semitic, but an Accadian designation.
As we shall see, along with the older culture the
Semitic settlers in Babylonia borrowed a good deal of
the theology of the Accadian people, modifying it in
accordance with their own beliefs, and identifying its
gods and demons with their own Baalim. It would not
be surprising, then, if we found that Merodach also had
once been an Accadian divinity, though his attributes,
and perhaps also his name, differed very considerably
from those of the Semitic Bel. Even after the Eomans
had identified their Saturn with the Kronos of the
Greeks, the essential characteristics of the two deities
remained altogether different.

In the legend of the assault of the seven evil spirits

106 LECTURE II.

upon the Moon — a legend which, unlike the hymns to
Merodach, goes back to the pre-Semitic epoch — the god
whom the Semitic translator has identified with Merodach
is called in the Accadian original Asari-uru-duga, "the
chief who does good to man." He receives his title
from the fact that, like the Semitic Merodach, he is the
son of Ea, from whom he conveys to mankind the charms
and philtres and other modes of healing and help which
a belief in sorcery invented. But there is little that is
solar about him. On the contrary, he is distinguished
from the Sun-god; and if he fights against the storm-
demons with his helmet of light, it is because he is one
of the bright powers of day who benefit mankind. The
fire-god is his minister, but he is himself little more
than the personified agency who carries the wisdom of
Ea to gods and men. It is in this way that he is
regarded as the god of life : the spells taught him by Ea
are able, if need be, to recover the sick and raise even
the dead to life. Hence he receives the title of Asari-
nam-tila, "the chief of life." The title, however, was
justified only by the creed of the sorcerer, not yet by
the worship of the solar Bel, the "merciful" lord.

"Whether the name Maruduk (Merodach) were Accadian
or Semitic in origin, I cannot say. If it is Semitic, it
has so changed its form that its etymology is no longer
recognisable. It may be merely a Semitic transformation
of the Accadian Uru-dug, "benefactor of man;" in any
case, its origin was already forgotten in the days when
the Babylonians first began to speculate on the derivation
of their words. "When first we meet with it in Semitic
texts, it is expressed by two ideographs, which read
Amar-ud, "the heifer of day." This is a punning refer-

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 107

ence to the old Accadian notion of the sky as a ploughed
field through which the Sun drew the share in his
annual journey. Under this aspect, the Sun was termed
by the Accadians Gudibir, "the bull of light;" hence
when Merodach became a Sun-god, he was identified
with the ancient Gudibir, and astrology taught that he
was one and same with each of the twelve zodiacal signs.1
"We have thus been able, in spite of the imperfection
of our documents, to trace the history of the patron-god
of Babylon from the time when he was as yet merely
the interpreter of the Accadian Ea, merely a water-spirit
rising with the dawn out of the Persian Gulf, to the
time when he became the Semitic Sun-god Bel, and
eventually the head of the Babylonian Pantheon. But
we have seen at the same time that up to the last he
remained essentially local in character ; if he was lord of
the other gods, it was only because the king of Babylon
was lord also of other cities and lands. It is not until

1 Halevy lias proposed to see in the name of Maruduk the Semitic
mar-utuki, " the lord of demons." This, however, is worse than the
Assyrian play upon the name, and takes no account of the fact that
maru in Assyro-Babylonian means only " son," never " lord," and that
utuki contains a t and not a d. In "W. A. I. ii. 48, 34, the Sun-god, it
is true, is called Utuki, but this word has nothing to do with udu, " the
day," but is the Accadian uiuk or " spirit." The Sun-god, in fact, was
addressed as "the great spirit." If a conjecture is permitted, I would
propose to see in Maruduk a Semitised form of the Accadian Muru-dug,
" he who benefits man," the Asari of the full title being omitted. Muru,
whence uru, " man," is a dialectic side-form of mulu. But the vowel
of the first syllable of Maruduk creates a difficulty, and since the Baby
lonians had forgotten the origin of the name, it is not likely that we
shall be more successful than they were in discovering it. Perhaps
Delitzsch is right (Wo lag das Paradies, p. 228) in seeing in Maruduk
mar-Urudug, "the son of Eridu." At all events, Merodach is called
"the son of Eridu" in "W. A. I. iv. 8, 41, and other places. Maruduk
is frequently contracted into Marduk.

108 LECTURE II.

Babylonia ceases to be an independent power that this
local conception of the great Babylonian divinity tends
to disappear. At Babylon, Cyrus, the foreigner from
Elam, becomes the favourite and the worshipper of
Bel-Merodach, and the priests of Merodach even pretend
that he had been the god's favourite before he came to
Babylon as its master and conqueror. Although, there
fore, it is only in Babylonia that Merodach is the god of
Cyrus, as he had been the god of Nebuchadnezzar, the
fact that Cyrus was not a Babylonian necessarily enlarged
the old conception of Bel and gave to him a universal
character. From this time onwards, Merodach was more
and more the god, not of the Babylonians alone, but of
all men everywhere; when the Greek kings of Asia
caused inscriptions to be written in the Babylonian
language and writing, Merodach takes the place of Zeus,
and, as the grandson of Aua or Eoa, "the dawn," is
identified with the Memnon of Homeric story.1

1 In the cuneiform inscription of Antiokhos Soter, published by
Strassmaier in the Verliandlungen des funften Orientalisten-CongresseSj
ii. 1, pp. 139—142, Merodach is called (1. 20) "the offspring of the
god who is the son of Aua" (AUl Aua). In lines 34 — 36, Nebo is
called " the son of E-Saggil, the first-born of Asari the chief (ristu),
the offspring of the god who is the son of Aua the queen." Here Aua
is represented as a goddess, and since her son was the father of Mero
dach, she must correspond to the goddess Zikum of the early texts.
Halevy, confounding her with Ea, has gone on to identify Ea with the
Hebrew Yahveh — an identification which, it is needless to say, is
phonetically impossible. Aua is obviously the Greek Eoa, either the
accusative of 'Ho>? or the feminine of the corresponding adjective.
From the time of Ktesias, Memnon, the son of the goddess Eos, had
been made an Assyro-Babylonian prince, and the resemblance of the
name of Ea to Eos may have suggested the idea of associating him with
Merodach, the lord of Babylon. Teutamos, with his double Teutasos,
the king by whom, according to Ktesias, Memnon was sent to the help
of Priam, is simply "the man of the sea" or tavtim, the name by

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 109

But already before the age of Cyrus there was one
portion of the Assyro-Babylonian world in which the
narrower local view of Merodach had perforce disap
peared. This was Assyria. The local gods of Babylonia
had been carried into Assyria by its Semitic settlers, or
else introduced into the cultivated circle of the court
by the literary classes of later days. Merodach was
necessarily among the latter. Certain of the Assyrian
kings, or at least their scribes, invoke Merodach with the
same fervour as the kings of Babylon. Shalmaneser II.
calls him u the prince of the gods," just as a pious Baby
lonian would have done ; and the monarchs of the second
Assyrian empire, who were crowned at Babylon as the
German princes were crowned at Eome, consider them
selves placed by the act under the patronage of the
Babylonian god.1 Although, therefore, the earlier As
syrian kings avoid the mention of Merodach, and the
introduction of his name into a specifically Assyrian in
scription is due either to the affectation of learning or to
a claim to the throne of Babylon, the very fact that the
name was introduced altered the conception under which

which the sea-coast of Babylonia, with its capital Eridu, was known.
Aua has, of course, nothing to do with the god Au, " the wind," a title
of Rimmon, which forms part of the proper name Au-nahdi (K 344. 6).
1 To "take the hand of Bel" was equivalent to recognition as king
of Babylon. Possibly it denoted that the person who performed the
ceremony had entered the holy of holies in which the imago of Bel-
Merodach stood — an act permitted only to the high-priest or the king
in his office of high-priest (sakkanaku). The sakkanaku is sometimes
identical with the king, sometimes distinguished from the king (e.g.
"W. A. I. i. 64. ix. 64), and the sakkanaku of Babylon was a special
title (thus Esarhaddon calls himself "sakkanaku of Babylon," but
"king of Sumer and Accad," W. A. I. i. 48, No. 6). Like sangu, the
word expressed servitude to the god.

110 LECTURE IT.

Merodach was regarded, and loosened the bonds of his
connection with a particular locality. In Assyria at
least, Bel-Merodach was as much a universal god as the
older gods of the celestial hierarchy.

This transformation of his nature was aided by the
inevitable confusion that arose between Bel-Merodach
and the older Bel. To such an extent was this confusion
carried, that we find Assur-bani-pal describing Merodach
as "Bel, the son of Bel." When such a statement
could be made in the learned court of Assur-bani-pal, it
is clear that to the ordinary Assyrian "the son of Ea"
of ancient Babylonian belief had been absorbed into the
solar Bel, the supreme divinity of the southern kingdom.

Even at Babylon, however, Merodach did not stand
alone. He shared his divine honours, as we have seen,
with his wife Zarpanitu and his son Nebo. The old
Accadian cult seems to have had a fancy for trinities or
triads, originating perhaps in the primary astronomical
triad of the Sun-god, the Moon-god and the Evening
Star. The Accadian triad usually consisted of male
deities. The Semites, however, as I hope to point out
in the next Lecture, introduced a new idea, that of sex,
into the theology of the country. Every god was pro
vided with his female reflection, who stood to him in the
relation of the wife to the husband. Baal, accordingly,
had his female reflex, his "face" as it was termed, Bilat
or Beltis. By the side of the Baal of Babylon, therefore,
stood Beltis, "the lady" by the side of her "lord."
Her local name was Zarpanitu, which a punning etymo
logy subsequently turned into Zir-banitu, " creatress of
seed,"1 sometimes written Zir-panitu, with an obvious
i So in S 1720, 23 (AN) Zi-ir-la-ni-tuv, W. A. I. ii, 67, 12.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. Ill

play on the word panu, or " face." Zarpanitu was of
purely Semitic origin. But she was identified with an
older Accadian divinity, Gasmu, "the wise one,"1 the
fitting consort of a deity whose office it was to convey
the wishes of the god of wisdom to suffering humanity.

The Accadian goddess, however, must originally have
stood rather in the relation of mother than of wife to the
primitive Merodach. She was entitled uthe lady of the
deep," " the mistress of the abode of the fish," and " the
voice of the deep."2 Hence she must have ranked by
the side of Ea, the fish-god and " lord of the deep ;" and
in the title " voice" or " incantation of the deep," we may
see a reference to the ideas which caused Ea to become
the god of wisdom, and brought the fish-god Cannes out
of the Persian Gulf to carry culture and knowledge to
the inhabitants of Chaldaea. In the roar of the sea-waves,
the early dwellers on the shores of the Gulf must have
heard the voice of heaven, and their prophets and diviners
must have discovered in it a revelation of the will of the
gods. It is not surprising, therefore, if Zarpanit was
specially identified with the goddess Lakhamun, who was
worshipped in the sacred island of Dilmun, or with the
goddess Elagu, whose name was revered in the mountains
of Elam.3

1 W. A. I. ii. 48, 37. The Accadian gasam is translated mudu, enqu,
in 82. 8—16, 1, Obv. 19.

2 W. A. I. ii. 54. 62, 55, 57. Other titles were "the lady of the
city of Kurnun," though "the goddess Kurnun" was identified with
Tasmit (W. A. I. ii. 48, 39), and Eru or Erua (W. A. I. ii. 54. 60, 59,
S 1720, 2). It is probable that she was identified with Nina the fish-
goddess, the daughter of Ea.

3 W. A. I. ii. 54. 58, 65. The name is probably connected with
that of the cosmogonic deities Lakhma and Lakhama, with the same

112 LECTURE II.

In Semitic days, Zarpanit, the inheritor of all these
old traditions and worships, fell from her high estate.
She ceased to be the goddess of wisdom, the voice of the
deep revealing the secrets of heaven to the diviner and
priest ; she became merely the female shadow and com
panion of Merodach, to whom a shrine was erected at the
entrance to his temple. Her distinctive attributes all
belong to the pre-Semitic epoch ; with the introduction
of a language which recognised gender, she was lost in
the colourless throng of Ashtaroth or Baalat, the god
desses who were called into existence by the masculino
Baalim.

Zarpanit, however, had something to do with the pro
minence given to Nebo in the Babylonian cult. Nebo,
the son of Merodach and Zarpanitu, had, as we have
seen, a chapel called E-Zida within the precincts of the
great temple of his father. E-Zida, " the constituted
house," derived its name from the great temple of Bor-
sippa, the suburb of Babylon, the ruins of which are
now known to travellers as the Birs-i-Nimnid. Borsippa,
it would seem, had once been an independent town, and
Nebo, or the prototype of Nebo, had been its protecting
deity. In the middle of the city rose E-Zida, the temple
of Nebo and Nana Tasmit, with its holy of holies, " the
supreme house of life," and its lofty tower termed "the
house of the seven spheres of heaven and earth." It
had been founded, though never finished, according to
Nebuchadnezzar, by an ancient king. For long centuries
it had remained a heap of ruin, until restored by Nebu
chadnezzar, and legends had grown up thickly around

termination as that which we find in the name of Dilmun or Dilvun
itself.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 113

it. It was known as the tul ellu, "the pure" or "holy
mound," and one of the titles of Nebo accordingly was
"god of the holy mound."1

The word Nebo is the Semitic Babylonian Nabiu or
Nabu. It means "the proclaimer," "the prophet," and
thus indicates the character of the god to whom it was
applied. Nebo was essentially the proclaimer of the
mind and wishes of Merodach. He stood to Merodach
in the same relation that an older mythology regarded
Merodach as standing to Ea. "While Merodach was
rather the god of healing, in accordance with his primi
tively solar nature, Nebo was emphatically the god of
science and literature. The communication of the gifts
of wisdom, therefore, which originally emanated from
Ea, was thus shared between Merodach and his son. At
Babylon, the culture-god of other countries was divided
into two personalities, the one conveying to man the
wisdom that ameliorates his condition, the other the
knowledge which finds its expression in the art of writing.

This division was due to the local character of Baby
lonian religion which I have tried to bring into relief.
When Babylon became the centre of the Babylonian
monarchy, Borsippa was already its suburb. But the
suburb had a past life and history of its own, which
gathered round its great temple and the god who was
worshipped there. "When, therefore, Borsippa was ab-

1 W. A. I. ii. 54, 71. Aim was " the king of the holy mound," but
in M602, 14, Lugal-girra, who was identified with Nergal, is brought
into connection with it. In the legend of the Tower of Babel (K 3657.
ii 1), reference is made to the " divine king of the holy mound." " The
king who comes forth from the holy mound" was one of "the three
great" or secret " names of Arm" (W. A. I. iii. 68, 19), while " the god
dess of the holy mound" was Istar (iii. 68, 27).

Ill LECTURE II.

sorbed into Babylon, its god was absorbed at the same
time; he became one of the triad worshipped by the
pious Babylonian, and was accounted the son of the god
of the larger city. But he still retained the proud title
of bilu asaridu, " the first-born Baal ;>J1 and it is possible
that the true signification of the name of his sanctuary
is not "the constituted house," but " house of the con
stituted" or " legitimate son."2 Up to the last, moreover,
Nebo maintained all his local rights. He was domesti
cated, it is true, in Babylon, but he continued to be the
god of Borsippa, and it was there that his true and
original temple lifted its tower to the sky.3

"We 'have only to glance over the titles which were
given to Nebo to see how thoroughly the conception of
"the prophet" was associated with that of "the writer."
He is not only "the wise," "the intelligent," "the
creator of peace," "the author of the oracle;"4 he is
also "the creator of the written tablet," "the maker of
writing," "the opener" and " enlarger of the ear."5
Assur-bani-pal is never weary of telling us, at the end of
the documents his scribes had copied from their Baby
lonian originals, that "Nebo and Tasmit had given him
broad ears (and) endowed (him) with seeing eyes," so that

1 W. A. I. ii. 60, 30 (K 104). Under this title he was identified
with En-zag of Dilmun (W. A. I. ii. 54, 66), whose name occurs in an
inscription found by Capt. Durand in the islands of Bahrein (Jrl.
E. A. S. xii. 2, 1880). Zag, it seems, signified " first-born" in the lan
guage of Dilvun. The proper name of the god of Dilvun to whom the
title was given was Pati (K 104), or Wuati (W. A. I. ii. 54, 67), as it
is also written.

2 See Tiele, De Hoofdtempel van Babel en die van Borsippa (1886),

3 Borsippa is called " the second Babylon (Din-Tir)," K 4309, 23.

4 W. A. I. ii. GO, 33. 5 W. A. I. ii. 60. 34, 45, 44.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 115

he had " written, bound together and published the store
of tablets, a work which none of the kings who had gone
before had undertaken, even the secrets of Nebo, the list
of characters as many as exist." In the literary dialect
of the Semitic epoch, Nebo went by the Accadian name
of dim-sar, "the scribe," and the ideograph by which
he is sometimes denoted was regarded by the Semitic
literati as signifying "the maker of intelligence" and
"the creator of writing."1

These, however, were not the only titles that Nebo
bore. He was also "the bond of the universe," and
"the overseer of the angel-hosts of heaven and earth."2
The latter office might be explained as derived from his
duties as scribe of the gods ; but it is hard to discover
what connection there could be between the first title
and his association with literature. Light is thrown
upon it, however, by the fact that the ziggurrat or tower
of his temple at Borsippa had the name of "the house
of the seven bonds of heaven and earth." The seven
"bonds" seem to represent the seven planets, or rather
their stations ; the tower was in seven stages, and each
stage was painted so as to symbolise the colours sym
bolical of the several planets. Nebo must, therefore,
have once been an elemental god, or at all events a
god connected with the chief of the heavenly bodies.
We know that Babylonian astronomy made him the
presiding deity of the planet Mercury, just as it mado
Merodach the presiding deity of Jupiter; but it cannot
have been in reference to this that the tower of his

1 W. A. I. ii. 60. 43, 45.

A 2 W. A. I. ii. 60. 31, 28. The Accadian equivalent of the first is
A-ftr, "father of the bond."

i2

116 LECTURE IT.

temple was dedicated to the seven heavenly spheres.
Nebo cannot well have been one of the seven himself in
the conception of its builders ; he must rather have been
the universe in which the seven spheres were set.

"We shall thus reach the true explanation of the ideo
graph by which he was commonly denoted, and which
has been translated " the maker of wisdom," "the creator
of writing," by the Semitic scribes. But such translations
are mere glosses. The ideograph signifies nothing more
than " maker" or " creator," and points to a time when
the local god of Borsippa was something more than the
son of Merodach and the patron of the literary class.
He was, in the belief of his worshippers at Borsippa, the
supreme god, the creator of the world.

Now there are traces of an old Accadian notion of the
universe according to which "the deep" was a flowing
stream which surrounded the earth like the Okeanos of
Homer. It was sometimes compared to a snake, some
times to a rope, and was then called "the rope of the
great god." The spirit or deity who personified it was
Innina.1 (In)nina seems to be the divinity who in later
days was assumed to have given a name to Nineveh, and
the name is to be explained as meaning " the god Nin,"

1 W. A. I. ii. 51, 45 — 49, where " the river of the snake" is described
as being also " the river of the rope of the great god," " the river of the
great deep," " the river of the sheepcote of the ghost-world," and " the
river of Innina." In 82. 8 — 16, 1, Obu. 5, innana is given as the Acca
dian pronunciation of the ideograph denoting " a goddess," the initial
syllable being only a weakening of the determinative AN, " divinity."
Nina and Nana are merely dialectic forms of the same word, which in
the genderless Accadian meant indifferently " lord" and " lady," though
more usually "lady." Nina seems to have been the pronunciation!
of the word at Eridu, Nana at Erech. At all events Nina was the
daughter of Ea.

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 117

or " the divine lord," just as Innana means " the goddess
Nana," " the divine lady." It will be remembered that
the worship of Nana was associated with that of Nebo in
his temple at Borsippa. The name of Borsippa itself,
moreover, is sometimes written in a punning fashion by
the help of ideographs which would read in Accadian
Bat-si-aabba, " the fortress of the horn of the sea," as if
it had once been held to stand on a "horn" or inlet of
the Persian Gulf. It is therefore possible that Innina
may have been the primitive Nebo of Borsippa, and that,
like the Ea of southern Babylonia, he may have been
regarded as himself the great " deep." If so, we should
have an explanation of his title "the bond" or "rope of
the universe," that ocean-stream, in fact, which seemed
to bind together the heavens and the earth. It seems to
be the same as "the bond" or "rope of the world" com
memorated by Accadian mythology (W. A. I. ii. 29, 62),
in curious parallelism to "the golden cord" of Homer
(IL viii. 19), which Zeus offered to let the other gods
hang from heaven to earth, in the vain endeavour to drag
him down from the upper end of it.

How the old demiurgic god of Borsippa, the symbol-
isation of the deep which wound like a rope round the
nether world, became the prophet-god Nebo of the
Semites, is difficult to understand. There is apparently
no connection between them. The prophet- god of the
Accadians was Tutu, the setting sun, who is said to
"prophesy before the king." The legends, however,
which attached themselves to the name of Ea show that
the Accadians associated together the ideas of wisdom
and of that primordial deep of which the Persian Gulf
was the visible manifestation ; in so far, therefore, as the

118 LECTURE II.

primitive god of Borsippa was the deep, he might also
have been considered to have been the author of know
ledge and intelligence. Indeed, as creator of the uni
verse he must have been credited with a certain degree
of wisdom.

It is possible, however, that the mediation between the
demiurge of Borsippa and the Semitic Nebo was due to
a confusion of the latter with an entirely different god
named Nuzku. Nuzku probably signified in Accadian
" the brilliance of the daybreak;" at all events he was a
solar deity, one of whose titles was "lord of the zenith;"
and in the cuneiform texts his name is often used to denote
the zenith, or elat same, " height of heaven," as it was
called in Assyrian, in opposition to the god of the horizon.1
]S~ow the ideograph which denoted " the daybreak," and
was frequently used to represent the name of Nuzku,
happened also to denote a leaf; and since the Accadians
had written upon the leaves and rind of the papyrus
before they began to write on clay, it was employed with
a certain determinative to denote the stylus or pen of the
scribe. Hence Nuzku, the god of the zenith, became also
Ivhadh, the god of the scribe's pen.

Nuzku, however, does not appear to have belonged
originally to Borsippa. He is entitled " the messenger"
or " angel of Mul-lil,"2 the older Bel; and it was only

1 See W. A. I. ii. 48, 55. The phrase is frequent, " From the horizon
(the god UR) to the zenith (the god Nuzku)." In ii. 54, 73, the god
UR is identified with Nebo ; hence .Nebo and Nuzku will have been
regarded as two different phases of the Sun-god, Nebo being the Sun
of the dawn, and Nuzku the Sun of midday.

2 W.A.I, ii. 19, 56. In E 2. 1, 159, 5, Nuzku is called "the
supreme messenger of E-kur." The amalgamation of Nebo and Nuzku

no doubt aided by the fact that while JSTuzku was thus the mes-

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 119

wlicn the older Bel of Nipur became merged in the
younger Bel-Merodach of Babylon, that Nuzku followed
the fortunes of his master and was himself domesticated
in the city of the younger Bel. When the transformation
was finally completed, three separate deities found them
selves united in the divine patron of the literary class.1

"Wherever the literary class went, Nebo their patron
went with them. ]N"ebo consequently became less local
in character than the other divinities of the pantheon, a
result that was further encouraged by the absorption of
his city of Borsippa into the larger Babylon. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Nebo showed a greater tendency
to migration than the older and more definitely localised
deities of Babylonia. A knowledge of Babylonian letters
and learning was accompanied by a knowledge of the

senger of Mul-lil the older Bel, Nebo was the prophet and messenger
of Merodach the younger Bel. The confusion between the two Bels
led necessarily to a confusion between their two ministers.

1 Up to the last, however, the priesthood of Babylon remembered
that Nebo and Nuzku were originally different divinities. In the great
temple of Merodach there was a separate chapel for Nuzku by the side
of the great tower. Nuzku originally appears to have come from Nipur,
and to have been identified with Nebo when the latter came to share
with Merodach his solar character. But originally the local god of
Borsippa, who as the supreme deity of the place was worshipped by
the inhabitants as the creator of the universe, \vas not the Sun-god,
but the power which bound the universe together. As this was the
ocean-stream which encircled the horizon and was the home of the
rising sun, it was not difficult to confound it with the morning sun.
itself. It seems strange that Nuzku, the messenger of " the lord of the
ghost-world," and as such the morning-grey, should have come to repre
sent the zenith ; but the same transference of meaning meets us in the
Assyrian verb ruipakhu, which properly refers to the rising sun, but
is also used of the zenith. That Nuzku, " who goes on the left of the
companions of the king," was primarily the Fire-god is expressly stat^'1
inK170t/tei;. 5

120 LECTURE II.

Babylonian god of letters and learning. In Assyria,
Nebo was honoured as much as he was in Babylonia
itself. The Assyrian kings and scribes might be silent
about the name of Merodach, but the name of Nebo was
continually in their mouths.1 His name and worship
passed even to the distant Semitic tribes of the west.
The names of places in Palestine in which his name
occurs, proves that the god of prophecy was adored by
Canaanites and Moabites alike. Moses, the leader and
prophet of Israel, died on the peak of Mount Nebo, and
cities bearing the name stood within the borders of the
tribes of Eeuben and Judah. When the Israelites entered
upon their literary era, the old name of roeh, or " seer,"
was exchanged for the more literary one of NeU, or
" prophet."

The Semites of Babylonia provided Nebo with a wife,
Tasmitu, "the hearer." She helped to open and enlarge
the ears which received the divine mysteries her husband's
inspiration enabled his devout servants to write down.
The revolution which transferred the learning of the
Babylonians from the Accadians to the Semites, trans
ferred the patronage of the literary class from the old
god Ea to his younger rivals Nebo and Tasmit.

I have dwelt thus long on the nature and history of
the three deities who shared together the great temple
of Babylon, partly because our materials in regard to
them are less imperfect than is the case with many of
the other gods, partly because they illustrate so well the
essentially local character of Babylonian religion. It is

1 In the prayer to Assur, K 100, Rev. 18, Nebo is called " the mes
senger of Assur," who thus takes the place of Merodach of Babylon.

BEL-MEHODACH OF BABYLON. 121

this which gives to it its peculiar complexion and fur
nishes the key to its interpretation. In so far as the
worship of Nebo forms an exception to the general rule,
it is an exception which bears out the old legal maxim
that the exception proves the rule. The worship of Nebo
was less local than that of other divinities, because he
was specially worshipped by a class which existed in each
of the local centres of the country. He alone was the
god of a class rather than of a locality. Babylonian
history began with separate cities, and centralisation was
never carried so far as to break up the local usages and
cults that prevailed in them. In the eyes of the people,
the several deities remained to the last a body of equals,
among whom the god of the imperial city presided, simply
because he was the god of the imperial city. If Ur had
taken the place of Babylon, the Moon-god of Ur would
have taken the place of Bel-Merodach. The gods of
Babylonia were like the local saints of Catholic Europe,
not like the Greek hierarchy of Olympus, ruled by the
despotic nod of Zeus.

The Semites of Babylonia thus closely resembled their
brother Semites of Canaan in their fundamental concep
tion of religion. As the Canaanite or Phoenician had
"lords many," the multitudinous Baalim who repre
sented the particular forms of the Sun-god worshipped in
each locality, so too the gods of Semitic Babylonia were
equally multitudinous and local — Merodach, for example,
being merely the Bel or Baal of Babylon, just as Mel-
karth (Melech-kiryath) was the Baal of Tyre. But the
parallelism extends yet further. "We have seen that the
rise of the prophet-god in Babylonia marks the growing
importance of literature and a literary class, just as the

122 LECTURE II.

beginning of a literary age in Israel is coeval with the
change of the seer into the prophet. Now the literary
age of Israel was long preceded by a literary age among
their Phoenician neighbours, and its growth is contem
poraneous with the closer relations that grew up between
the monarchs of Israel and Hiram of Tyre. What Israel
was in this respect to the Phoenicians, Assyria was to
Babylonia. The Assyrians were a nation of warriors and
traders rather than of students ; their literature was for
the most part an exotic, a mere imitation of Babylonian
culture. In Babylonia, education was widely diffused ;
in Assyria, it was confined to the learned class. We must
remember, therefore, that in dealing with Assyrian docu
ments we are dealing either with a foreign importation
or with the thoughts and beliefs of a small and special
class.

This is the class from whom we have to gain our know
ledge of the form of religion prevalent in Assyria. It
is wholly Babylonian, with one important exception.
Supreme over the old Babylonian pantheon rises the
figure of a new god, the national deity of Assyria, its
impersonation Assur. Assur is not merely primus inter
pares, merely the president of the divine assembly, like
Merodach; he is their lord and master in another and
more autocratic sense. Like the Yahveh of Israel, he
claims to be "king above all gods," that "among all
gods" there is none like unto himself. In his name and
through his help the Assyrian kings go forth to conquer ;
the towns they burn, the men they slay, the captives
they take, are all his gifts. It is to destroy " the enemies
of Assur," and to lay their yoke upon those who disbelieve
in his name, that they lead their armies into other lands ;

BEL-HERODACH OF BABYLON. 123

it is his decrees, his law, that they write upon the monu
ments they erect in conquered countries. The gods of
Babylonia are invoked, it is true ; their old Babylonian
titles are accorded to them j they are called upon to curse
the sacrilegious in the stereotyped phrases of the ancient
literature ; but it is Assur, and Assur alone, to whom the
Assyrian monarch turns in moments of distress; it is
Assur, and Assur alone, in whose name he subdues the
infidel. Only the goddess Istar finds a place by the side
of Assur.

It is not difficult to account for all this. In passing
from their native homes to Assyria, the Babylonian
deities lost that local character which was the very breath
of their existence. How far they owe their presence in
Assyrian literature to the literary class, how far they had
been brought from Babylonia in early days by the people
themselves, I am not prepared to say. One fact, however,
is clear ; in becoming Assyrian the Babylonian gods have
lost both their definiteness and their rank. The invocations
addressed to them lack their old genuine ring, their titles
are borrowed from the literature of the southern kingdom,
and their functions are usurped by the new god Assur.
It is almost pitiable to find Bel-Merodach invoked, in
phrases that once denoted his power above other deities,
by the very kings who boast of their conquests over his
people, or who even razed his city to the ground. The
Assyrian, in fact, occupied much the same position as an
Israelite who, while recognising the supremacy of his
national God, thought it prudent or cultivated to offer
at the same time a sort of inferior homage to the Baalim
of Canaan.

At the outset, Assur was as much a purelv local divinity

124 LECTURE II.

as Bel-Merodach of Babylon. He was the god of Assur
(now Kaleh-Sherghat), the primitive capital of the country.
But several causes conspired to occasion him to lose this
purely local character, and to assume in place of it a
national character. The capital of Assyria was shifted
from Assur to Nineveh, and the worship of Assur, instead
of remaining fixed at Assur, was shifted at the same time.
Then, moreover, the importation of Babylonian deities
had broken the close connection which existed in the
mind of a Babylonian between the deity and the city
where he was worshipped ; to the Assyrian, Bel-Merodach
was no longer peculiarly the patron-god of Babylon ; his
other attributes came instead to the front. Assyria,
furthermore, from the time it first became an independent
kingdom, formed an homogeneous whole; it was not
divided into separate states, as was so often the case with
Babylonia. A national feeling was consequently per
mitted to grow up, which the traditions of the old cities
of Chaldsea and the frequent conquest of the country by
foreigners prevented from developing in the south. Per
haps, too, the composite origin of Assur himself had
something to do with the result.

The name of Assur is frequently represented by a
character which among other ideographic values had that
of "good." The name was accordingly explained by
the Assyrians of the later historical age as "the good
god," with a reference perhaps to their own words asiru,
"righteous," and asirtu, "righteousness." But this was
not the original signification either of the name or of the
character by which it was expressed. The god so denoted
was one of the primaeval deities of Babylonian cosmology
who bore in Accadian the title of Ana gar (An-sar), " the

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 125

god of the hosts of heaven," or simply Sar, "the upper
firmament." It was believed that Ana sar was the male
principle which, by uniting with the female principle
(Ana) ki-sar, "(the goddess of) the earth (and) the hosts
of heaven," produced the present world. It was to this
old elemental deity that the great temple of E-sarra was
dedicated, whose son was said to be the god Ninip or
Adar.

A fragment of Babylonian cosmogomy has been pre
served to us by Damascius, a writer of the sixth century,
who had access to older materials now lost. Here Ana-
sar and Ki-sar are called 'Ao-o-o>/>os and Kio-o-a/^, and we are
told of them that they were the offspring of the primaeval
Lakhma and Lakhama, and the progenitors of the three
supreme gods, Anu, Mul-lil and Ea. The worship of
these primaeval divinities had been rooted in Assyria
from an early period ; probably the earliest Semitic emi
grants from the south found it already established there.
It was inevitable that before long a confusion should
grow up between the name of the god An-sar or Assor,
and that of the city of Assur in which he was adored.
But the city of Assur had nothing to do with the god.
The name seems to be a corruption of the Accadian
A-usar, or "water-bank," first corrupted by its Semitic
inhabitants into Assur and then into Asur, with a pos
sible reference to the word asurra, " the bed (of a river)."1

1 The attempt has been made to show that the names of the god
and of the country ought to be distinguished from one another by
writing the first with ss and the second with a single s. The Assyrian?,
however, wrote both alike, sometimes with ss, sometimes with s; and
the fact that the name of the country is often expressed by attaching
the determinative affix of locality to the name of the god proves that
they were not conscious of any difference, phonetic or otherwise,

126 LECTURE IT.

The confusion between Assor the god and Assur the
city had the effect of identifying the god with his city
more closely than could be the case with the divine
patron of a Babylonian town. The city of Assur was
itself a god : offences against the city were offences
against the god ; the enemies of the city were the enemies
also of the god. The instinct, however, of regarding
the deities they worshipped as individuals, was too deeply
implanted within the mind of the Semites to allow
either this fact, or the further fact that the god himself
was originally a mere elemental one, to obliterate his
individual and anthropomorphic character. Though Assur
was the personification of the city, he was also its Baal
or lord.

The transference of the centre of power from Assur to
Nineveh made the anthropomorphic side of Assur's nature
still more prominent. He represented now the whole
nation and the central power which governed the nation.
He was thus the representative at once of the people
and of the king in whose hands the government of the
people was centred. Assyria became " the land of the
god Assur," belonging to him in much the same way as
the city of Babylon belonged to Bel-Merodach. But
whereas Bel-Merodach was the Baal of a particular city
only, Assur was, like the Yahveh of Israel, the national
god of a race.

There was yet another respect in which Assur resem
bled the Yahveh of Israel. There was no goddess Assur-
ritu by the side of Assur, as there was an Anatu by the

between the two. In such a matter we cannot be wiser than onr
Assyrian teachers.

BEL-MEKODACH OF BABYLON. 127

side of Aim, a Beltis by the side of Bel.1 If, in imita
tion of Babylonian usage, Bilat or Beltis is sometimes
addressed as the consort of Assur, it is simply a literary
affectation ; Assur was not a Bel or Baal, like Merodach.
Bilat is a Babylonian goddess ; she is properly the wife
of the older Bel, in later times identified with Zarpanit.
There is no indication that Assur had a "face" or reflec
tion ; he stands by himself, and the inspiration received
from him by the Assyrian kings is received from him
alone. When a female divinity is invoked along with
him, it is the equally independent goddess Istar or Ash-
toreth.

We possess a list of the deities whose images stood in
the temples of Assur at Assur and Nineveh.2 At the
head of each list the name of Assur is thrice invoked,
and once his name is followed by that of Istar. There
was, in fact, a special form of Istar, under which she was
worshipped as "the Istar of Mneveh;" but the form
was purely local, not national, arising from the existence
;liere of a great temple dedicated to her. There was no
national goddess to place by the side of the national god.
Assur consequently differs from the Babylonian gods,
not only in the less narrowly local character that belongs
to him, but also in his solitary nature. He is " king of
all gods" in a sense in which none of the deities of Baby
lonia were.3 He is like the king of Assyria himself,

1 If Istar is sometimes called Assuritu, " the Assyrian," the adjective
is always a mere title, and never becomes a proper name (see W. A. I.
v. 1, 65). Like the title "Istar of Nineveh," it serves only to distin
guish the Assyrian Istar from the Istar of Arbela.

2 W. A. I. iii. 66.

3 The following prayer or hymn (K 100) illustrates the way in which
the learned literati of Assur-bani-pal's court sought to make o-0od the

128 LECTURE II.

brooking no rival, allowing neither wife nor son to share
in the honours which he claims for himself alone. He is

deficiencies of their national god, and to connect him with the deities
of Babylonia :

1. "A prayer to Assur the king of the gods, ruler (H) over heaven

and earth,

2. the father who has created the gods, the supreme first-born (of

heaven and earth),

3. the supreme muttallu who (inclines) to counsel,

4. the giver of the sceptre and the throne.

5. (To) Nin-lil the wife of Assur, the begetter (takkat), the crea

tress of heaven (and earth),

6. who by the command of her mouth ....

7. (To) Sin the lord of command, the uplifter of horns, the spec

tacle of heaven,

8. who for delivering the message (has been appointed).

9. (To) the Sun-god, the great judge of the gods, who causes the

lightning to issue forth,

10. who to his brilliant light ....

11. (To) Anu the lord and prince, possessing the life of Assur the

father of the (great) gods.

12. (To) Eimmon the minister (gugal] of heaven and earth, the

lord of the wind and the lightning of heaven.

14. (To) Istar the queen of heaven and the stars, whose seat (is

exalted).

15. (To) Merodach the prince of the gods, the interpreter (BAR-BAR)

of the spirits of heaven and (earth).

16. (To) Adar the son of Mul-lil, the giant (gitmalu), the first

born ....

17. fixed and ....

18. (To) Nebo the messenger of ^ssur (An-sar) ....

19. (To) Nergal the lord of might (abari) and strength (dunni)t

who ....

20. (To) the god who marches in front, the first-born ....

21. (To) the seven gods, the warrior deities ....

22. the great gods, the lords (of heaven and earth)."

On the obverse, little of which is left, mention is made of " the image
of the great gods," " as many as (dwell) in the midst of the stone," and
"at the opening of their holy mouth" they are asked to befriend the
king "himself, his princes (malild), their name and their seed."

BEL-MERODACH OF BABYLON. 129

essentially a jealous god, and as such sends forth his
Assyrian adorers to destroy his unbelieving foes. Wife
less, childless, he is mightier than the Babylonian Baalim;
less kindly, perhaps, less near to his worshippers than
they were, but more awe-inspiring and more powerful.
We can, in fact, trace in him all the lineaments upon
which, under other conditions, there might have been
built up as pure a faith as that of the God of Israel.

LECTURE III.
THE GODS OF BABYLONIA.

IN my last Lecture I have been obliged to some extent
to anticipate the conclusions to which a survey of the
older literature of Babylonia will lead us. I have had
to refer more than once to the older gods of the land,
and to point out that the Babylonian deities of the later
inscriptions are only in part of purely Semitic origin, in
part adaptations of earlier Accadian divinities. They
are characterised, however, by one common feature ; they
are all alike local, belonging to the cities where their
cults were established as literally as the temples in which
they were adored. Merodach might, indeed, be invoked
elsewhere than at Babylon, but it was only as god of
Babylon that he would hear the prayer. In Assyria
alone we find another order of things, more analogous to
that which meets us among the Israelites ; in Babylonia
the gods are local Baalim as fully as they were in Phoe
nicia. What differences may have existed between the
religious conceptions of the Phoenicians and Babylonians
in this respect were but superficial, due mainly to the
fact that the Phoenician cities were never amalgamated
into a single empire, while Babylon succeeded in impos
ing its authority upon its sister towns.

There are two especially of the older gods whose names |

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 131

have frequently recurred. These are Ea and the original
Bel. Let me speak of Ea first.

Ea, as we have already seen, was the god not only of
the deep, but also of wisdom. Ancient legends affirmed
that the Persian Gulf — the entrance to the deep or ocean-
stream — had been the mysterious spot from whence the
first elements of culture and civilisation had been brought
to Chaldeea. Berossos, the Chaldean historian — so at
least his epitomiser Alexander Polyhistor declared — had
reported them as follows :

" At Babylon there was a great resort of people of various races who
inhabited Chaldaea, arid lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the
field. In the first year there appeared in that part of the Erythraean
sea which borders upon Babylonia, a creature endowed with reason,
by name Cannes, whose whole body (according to the account of
Apollodoros) was that of a fish ; under the fish's head he had another
head, with feet also below similar to those of a man subjoined to the
fish's tail. His voice, too, and language were articulate and human ;
and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.

" This being was accustomed to pass the day among men, but took no
food at that season ; and he gave them an insight into letters and
sciences and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct houses,
to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles
of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of
the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits ; in short, he
instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and
humanise their lives. From that time, nothing material has been
added by way of improvement to his instructions. Now when the sun
had set, this being Cannes used to retire again into the sea, and pass
the night in the deep, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared
other animals like Cannes, of which Berossos proposes to give an
account when he comes to the history of the kings. Moreover, Cannes
wrote concerning the generation of mankind, of their different ways of
life, and of their civil polity."1

1 Eusebios (Cliron.), Cory's translation : " The other animals like
Cannes," according to Abydenos (ap. Euseb. Cliron. i. 6, Mai), wero
Annedotos in the time of Amillaros, the third antediluvian king, called

K 2

132 LECTURE TIT.

A native fragment of the legend has, it is probable,
been accidentally preserved among a series of extracts
from various Accadian works, in a bilingual reading-book
compiled for the use of Semitic students of Accadian.
It reads thus :

" To the waters their god has returned ;
into the house of (his) repose the protector descended.1
The wicked weaves spells, but the sentient one grows not old.
A wise people repeated his wisdom.
The unwise and the slave (literally person) the most valued of his

master forgot him ;
there was need of him and he restored (his) decrees (?)"2

The exact etymology of the name which appears under

Amelon by Apollodoros, Euedokos, Eiieugamos, Eneubulos and Ane-
mentos in the time of Daos (? Tammuz) the shepherd, and Anodaphos
in the time of Euedoreskhos. Apollodoros makes "the Musaros
Cannes, the Annedotos," appear in the time of Ammenon the successor
of Amelon, another Annedotos in the time of Daonos the shepherd,
and Odakon in the time of Euedoreskhos. A comparison of Anodaphos
and Odakon shows the true reading to have been Anodakon, i.e. "Ann
and Dagon (Dagan)," who are constantly associated together by Sargon,
and who says of them that he had " written the laws (not " immunitas,"
as Winckler) of Harran by the will of Anu and Dagon." Annedotos
seems to be a Greek compound, "given by Anu." In any case, some
of the successors of Cannes appear to have been derived from the
legends of Erech, the city of Anu, and not, like the original Cannes, from
Eridu. "With the exception of the first, who is made a Babylonian,
the antediluvian kings come either from Larankha, which, as we learn
from the Deluge-tablet, is a corrupt reading for Surippak near Sippara,
or from Pariti-bibla, a Greek translation of " the country of tablets" or
" books," a title given to the Accad of Sargon, according to W. A. I.
ii. 51, 8. We may infer from this that the whole story of the ante
diluvian kings had its origin at Sippara.

1 Iggillum (which does not signify " a cry of woe," as Jeremias sup
poses) is explained by natsiru, "the defender," in W. A. I. v. 28, 72.
Magiru, " the obedient one," is called his throne-bearer in W. A. I. iii.
68, 7, where the Iggillum is identified with Ea.

2 W.A.I. ii. 16. 57—71.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 133

the Greek dress of Cannes has not yet been ascertained.
Lenorrnant thought that it represented Ea-Jchan, " Ea the
fish." But whether or not this is the case, it is certain
that Cannes and Ea are one and the same. Ea, as we
have seen, not only had his home in the waters of the
Persian Gulf, he was also the culture-god of primitive
Babylonia, the god of wisdom, the instructor of his
worshippers in arts and science. An old Babylonian
sermon on the duty of a prince to administer justice
impartially and without bribes, declares that if "he
speaks according to the injunction (or writing) of the
god Ea, the great gods will seat him in wisdom and the
knowledge1 of righteousness."2 Ea was, moreover, like
Cannes, represented as partly man and partly fish. Some
times the fish's skin is thrown over the man's back, the
head of a fish appearing behind that of the man ; some
times the body of the man is made to terminate in the
tail of a fish. A gem in the British Museum, on which
the deity is depicted in the latter fashion, bears an in
scription stating that the figure is that of " the god of
pure life." Now "the god of pure life," as we are
expressly informed by a rubrical gloss to a hymn in
honour of the demiurge Ea (Obv. 5), was one of the
names of Ea.

The name Ea, which is transcribed Aos by Damascius,
signifies "a house," or rather "belonging to a house."3

1 Tndat, to be distinguished from Tuddtu, " offspring," W. A. I. ii.
29, 69.

2 W. A. I. iv. 55, 7. In a penitential psalm (W. A. I. iv. 61, 27),
" the writing of Ea" is referred to as " giving rest to the heart."

3 Ea is translated "house," W.A.I, ii. 15, 42; iv. 16, 48. Con
versely the god Ea is represented by (AN) E, " the god of the house/'

134 LECTURE III.

Ea was therefore originally the " house-god" — a desig
nation which it is difficult to reconcile with his aquatic
character. Possibly his worship goes back to a time
when the inhabitants of the coast of the Persian Gulf
lived in pile-dwellings like those of Switzerland or the
British Islands; possibly it belongs to a later period,
when the old marine god had become the household
deity of those who received his benefits and believed
him to be the source of their culture. He was sym
bolised, it would seem, by a serpent;1 and to this day
the Zulus believe that the spirits of their ancestors are
embodied in certain harmless snakes which frequent their
homes. However this may be, the primaeval seat of the
worship of Ea was the city of Eridu, now represented
by the mounds of Abu Shahrein on the eastern bank of
the Euphrates, and not far to the south of Mugheir
or Ur.

Eridu is a contracted form of the older Eri-duga, or
"good city," which appears in the non-Semitic texts of
northern Babylonia as Eri-zeba, with the same meaning.
The place was thus a peculiarly holy spot, whose sanctity
was established far and wide throughout the country.
But it was not a holy city only. It is often termed,

in iv. 6, 47. This seems to be the form which has given rise to the
A-os of Damascius. In 0-annes the initial is due to the contraction
of o-a.

1 See above, p. 116. Among the symbols of the gods on contract-
stones, the serpent occupies a prominent place. According to W. A. I.
ii. 59, 21, the snake-god was Serakh, the god of corn and "spirit of
E-sara," whose name signified "the treading of corn" (v. 17. 31, 32),
and who is called "the overseer" or "assembler of the gods of heaven
and earth" (K 4415, Rev. 10). On the other hand, in an unnumbered
fragment (M, line 10), "a snake in thy bed" (asurra-ki) is invoked as
a curse.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 135

more especially in the sacred texts, "the lordly city,"1
and we are told that one of its titles was " the land of
the sovereign." In historical times, however, Eridu had
sunk to the condition of a second-rate or even third-rate
town; its power must therefore belong to that dimly
remote age of which the discoveries at Tel-loh have
enabled us to obtain a few glimpses. There must have
been a time when Eridu held a foremost rank among
the cities of Babylonia, and when it was the centre from
which the ancient culture and civilisation of the country
made its way.2

Along with this culture went the worship of Ea, the
god of Eridu, who to the closing days of the Babylonian
monarchy continued to be known as Eridiiga, " the god
of Eridu." At the period when the first elements of
Chaldsean culture were being fostered in Eridu, the city
stood at the mouth of the Euphrates and on the edge of
the Persian Gulf. If the growth of the alluvium at the
mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris has always been the
same as is the case at present (about sixty-six feet a year),
this would have been at the latest about 3000 B.C.;
but as the accumulation of soil has been more rapid of
late, the date would more probably be about 4000 B.C.
Already, therefore, the cult of Ea would have been esta
blished, and the sea-faring traders of Eridu would have
placed themselves under his protection.

It will be noticed that the culture-myths of Babylonia,

1 NUN-KI, pronounced Nunpe, according to 82. 8 — 16, 1, Obv. 21.
EN-KI, another title of Eridu, means " land of the lord."

2 The decay of Eridu was probably due to the increase of the delta
at the head of the Persian Gulf, which made it an inland instead of a
maritime city, and so destroyed its trade.

136 LECTURE III.

like the culture-myths of America, bring the first civiliser
of the country from the sea. It is as a sea deity that
Cannes is the culture-hero of the Chaldeeans ; it is from
the depths of the Persian Gulf that he carries to his
people the treasures of art and science. Two questions
are raised by this fact. Was the culture of Babylonia
imported from abroad ; and was Ea, its god of culture,
of foreign extraction ?

The last great work published by Lepsius1 was an
attempt to answer the first of these questions in the
affirmative. He revived the old theory of a mysterious
Cushite population which carried the civilisation of Egypt
to the shores of Babylonia. But to all theories of this
sort there is one conclusive objection. The origin of
Babylonian culture is so closely bound up with the origin
of the cuneiform system of writing, that the two cannot
be separated from each other. Between the hieroglyphics
of Egypt, however, and the primitive pictures out of
which the cuneiform characters developed, there is no
traceable connection. Apart from those general analogies
which we find in all early civilisations, the script, the
theology and the astronomy of Egypt and Babylonia
show no vestiges of a common source.

Nevertheless, there is now sufficient evidence to prove
that at the very dawn of the historic period in Babylonia,
maritime intercourse was being carried on between this
country on the one hand and the Sinaitic Peninsula and
India on the other. The evidence is as startling as it is
curious.

The statues discovered by M. de Sarzec at Tel-loh,

1 Introduction to his Niibisclw Grammatik (1880).

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 137

which may be roughly dated about 4000 B.C., remind
every traveller who has been in Egypt of the great
diorite statue of king Khephren, the builder of the second
pyramid of Gizeh, which is now in the Bulak Museum.
The execution, indeed, is infinitely inferior; but the
attitude, the pose, the general effect, and to a certain
extent the dress, are remarkably alike. "What is more,
some of the Tel-loh statues are carved out of hard diorite
stone. Now one of the inscriptions that accompany them
affirms that the stone was brought from the land of
Magan ; and though in later times Magan was used to
denote Lower Egypt, Dr. Oppert and myself have long
ago pointed out that originally it signified the Sinaitic
Peninsula. Ever since the epoch of the Third Dynasty,
Egyptian garrisons had held possession of the Peninsula,
and Egyptian miners had quarried there ; and as the age
of the fourth Egyptian Dynasty corresponds with the
age which we must assign to the statues of Tel-loh, it
would seem that as far back as six thousand years ago
stone was conveyed by sea from the quarries of Sinai to
Egypt and Babylonia, and that a school of sculpture had
already arisen in that part of the world. "What clinches
the matter is the fact observed by Mr. Petrie, that the
unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city
which one of the figures of Tel-loh carries upon its lap,
is the same as the unit of measurement employed by the
Pyramid builders.1

In an opposite direction we may infer that Chaldsean
traders had also made their way to the western coast of
India. Apart from the existence of teak in the ruins of

1 Sec above, p. 33.

138 LECTURE III.

Mugheir, an ancient Babylonian list of clothing mentions
sindhu, or "muslin," the sadin of the Old Testament, the
o-ivSwv of the Greeks. That o-n/Swi/ is merely " the Indian"
cloth has long been recognised; and the fact that it
begins with a sibilant and not with a vowel, like our
" Indian," proves that it must have come to the west by
sea and not by land, where the original s would have
become h in Persian mouths.1 That sindhu is really the
same word as o-ivSwv is shown by its Accadian equivalent,
which is expressed by ideographs signifying literally
" vegetable cloth."

This intercourse with other countries, and the influence
which a school of sculpture in the Sinaitic Peninsula
appears to have exercised upon the Babylonians, must
necessarily have had much to do with the early develop
ment of Chaldeean culture, even though it were indige
nous in its origin. It therefore becomes possible that Ea,
the deity with whom the introduction of such a culture
is associated, may also have come from abroad. At pre
sent, however, there is no proof of this, though it is quite
possible that some of his features are foreign ; and it is
even possible that the primitive Shamanistic worship of
spirits, which, as we shall see hereafter, originally cha
racterised the religion of the Accadians, first became a
worship of the god Ea through foreign influence, other
spirits afterwards passing into gods when the example
had once been set.

Ea, however, was not merely a god of the sea. The
Persian Gulf, which formed the entrance to the ocean-

1 Supposing, of course, that Iranian tribes were already settled to
the east of Babylonia. In'W. A. I. v. 28. 19, 20, sindhu is explained
to \>Q8ipn# Kurri, "cloth of Kur," and addu, "a veil."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 139

stream that encircled the world, was fed by the great
river on which Eridu stood. Ea accordingly was a river-
god as well as a sea-god ; he is entitled not only " the
king of the deep," but "the king of the river"1 also.
Out of the mixture of the two arose the conception of
the encircling ocean, and the further title, "god of the
river of the great snake."2 Ea was thus emphatically a
water-god, the deity who presided over the watery ele
ment wherever it was found, and whose home was in the
waves of the Persian Gulf.

Ea had a consort who was not at all like the Semitic
goddesses we have been considering in the last Lecture.
She was no pale reflexion of a male divinity, no Anat or
Beltis or Zarpanit, differing from her husband only in
the grammatical suffix of her name ; but a genuine and
independent deity, whose powers were co-extensive with
those of Ea. She was known as Dav-kina or Dav-ki,
"the lady of the earth," and personified the earth just as
Ea personified the water. Water and earth — these were
the two elements out of which the old inhabitants of
Eridu believed the world to have been formed. It was
the theory of Thales in its primitive shape * the water-
god at Eridu took the place occupied by the Sky-god in
other cities of Babylonia. He was in fact addressed, not
only as "lord of the earth," but also as "'lord of heaven
and earth," "the master of all created things," "the
ruler of all the world," " the god of the universe," "the
prince of the zenith" of heaven.3 There is no room here
for the Anu or Sky-god of northern Babylonian theology.

1 W. A. I. ii. 55, 23. 2 W. A. I. ii. 56, 27.

3 W. A. I. ii. 58, No. 5.

140 LECTURE III.

Not only, then, the elements of culture and civilisa
tion, but the created universe itself proceeded out of that
watery abyss, that " deep," as it is called in our transla
tion of the Book of Genesis, which was at once the home
and the visible form of Ea. Ea was the demiurge, and
a hymn exists in which he is addressed as such under
each of his many titles. Thus he is invoked as "the
god of pure life" "who stretches out the bright firma
ment, the god of good winds, the lord of hearing and
obedience, creator of the pure and the impure, establisher
of fertility, who brings to greatness him that is of small
estate. In places difficult of access we have smelt his
good wind. May he command, may he glorify, may he
hearken to his worshippers. 0 god of the pure crown,
moreover, may all creatures that have wings and fins be
strong. Lord of the pure oracle who giveth life to the
dead, who hath granted forgiveness to the conspiring
gods, hath laid homage and submission upon the gods
his foes. For their redemption did he create mankind,
even he the merciful one with whom is life. May he
establish and never may his word be forgotten in the
mouth of the black-headed race (of Sumir) whom his
hands created. As god of the pure incantation may he
further be invoked, before whose pure approach may the
evil trouble be overthrown, by whose pure spell the
siege of the foe is removed. 0 god who knowest the
heart, who knowest the hearts of the gods that move
his compassion, so that they let not the doing of evil
come forth against him, he who establishes the assembly
of the gods (and knows) their hearts, who subdues the
disobedient. . . . May he (determine) the courses of the
stars of heaven ; like a flock may he order all the gods.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 141

May lie exorcise the sea-monster of chaos; her secrets
may he discover (?) and destroy for evermore. Mankind
may he raise to length of days, and may he overthrow
mischief (?) for future time. Since (their) places he
created, he fashioned, he made strong, lord of the world
is he called by name, even father Bel. The names of
the angels1 he gave unto them. And Ea heard, and his
liver was soothed, and he spake thus : ' Since he has made
his men strong by his name, let him, like myself, have
the name of Ea. May he bear (to them) the bond of all
my commands, and may he communicate all my secret
knowledge through the fifty names of the great gods.'
His fifty names he has pronounced, his ways he has
restored; may they be observed, and may he speak as
formerly. Wise and sentient, may he rule triumphantly.
May father to son repeat and hand them down. May
he open the ears of both shepherd and flock." 2

The fracture which has destroyed the middle part of
the hymn makes it difficult to connect together the
earlier and latter portions of the poem. The poet, how
ever, evidently wishes to show that the demiurge Bel of
northern Babylonia is one and the same with the demiurge

1 Or " spirits of heaven," called Igigi in Assyrian, perhaps from agdgu,
" to be powerful." The name is ideographically expressed by the deter
minative of divinity followed by " twice five." Jensen, however, has
shown (Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, i. 1), that whereas the Aminaki or
"spirits of earth" were denoted by the numeral 8 (Accadian lisa], the
Igigi were denoted by the numeral 9 (Ace. isimu). It is difficult to
follow his further combinations, which would connect them with the
ribu of W. A. I. ii. 35, 37 (expressed ideographically by AN-NUN-GAL,
"the great divine princes"), as well as with ra'hebu, the Heb. Rahab.

2 The text has been published by George Smith in the Transactions
of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, iv. 2, and by Delitzsch in his
Assyrisclie Lesestucke.

142 LECTURE III.

Ea of the south. It is one of the many attempts that
were made in later days to harmonise and identify the
various local deities of Chaldeea to whom in different
localities the same attributes were assigned. The task
was rendered easier by the numerous names, or rather
titles, which the several deities bore. Here Ea is accre
dited with no less than fifty — all, too, transferred to him
from the other " great gods ; " and it is by a knowledge
of them that the secret wisdom of Ea is communicated
to both gods and men. In Babylonia, as in most primitive
communities, the name was regarded as identical with
the thing which it signified ; hence the mystic importance
attached to names and the leading part they played in
exorcisms and charms.

How a water-god became the demiurge seems at first
sight obscure. But it ceases to be so when we remember
the local character of Babylonian religion. Ea was as
much the local god of Eridu as Merodach was of Baby
lon, or Assur of Assyria. His connection with the water
was due to the position of Eridu at the mouth of the
Euphrates and on the shore of the sea, as well as to the
maritime habits of its population. In other respects he
occupied the same place as the patron-deities of the other
great cities. And these patron- deities were regarded as
creators, as those by whose agency the present world
had come into existence, and by whose hands the ancestors
of their worshippers had been made.

This conception of a creating deity is one of the dis
tinguishing features of early Babylonian religion. Man
kind are not descended from a particular divinity, as
they are in other theologies ; they are created by him.
The hymn to Ea tells us that the god of Eridu was the

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 143

creator of the black-headed race — that is to say, tha old
non-Semitic population whose primary centre and start
ing-point was in Eridu itself. It was as creators that
the Accadian gods were distinguished from the host of
spirits of whom I shall have to speak in another Lecture.
The Accadian word for " god" was dimer, which appears
as dingir, from an older dingira, in the southern dialect of
Sumer. Now dimer or dingir is merely "the creator,"
formed by the suffix r or ra, from the verb dingi or dime,
"to create." A simpler form of dimer is dime, a general
name for the divine hierarchy. By the side of dime, dim,
stood ffime, gim, with the same meaning ; and from this
verb came the Sumerian name of Istar, Gingira.1 Istar
is said to have been the mother of mankind in the story
of the Deluge, and as Gula, "the great" goddess, she is
addressed in a prayer as " the mother who has borne the
men with the black heads."2 It was in consequence of
the fact that he was a creator that Ea was, according to
Accado-Sumerian ideas, a dingir or "god."

In the cosmology of Eridu, therefore, the origin of
the universe was the watery abyss. The earth lay upon
this like a wife in the arms of her husband, and Dav-kina
accordingly was adored as the wife of Ea. It was through

1 W.A.I, ii. 48, 29. There was another dimme, or more properly
dimma, meaning " weak," the Assyrian tarpu, from rapu (W. A. I. v.
29, 71). Tarpu is the Hebrew t&raphim, which, as Dr. Neubauer has
pointed out, must be connected with the Eephaim, or " shades of the
dead," and hence " prehistoric people," and signify the images of dead
ancestors. Dimma, " weak," being confounded with dimme, " creator,"
by the Semites, caused the ideograph which denotes "a spirit" to
acquire the (Assyrian) value of rap, from rappu, a synonym ofkatsutu,
"the shade of the dead."

2 W.A.I. iv. 61. 27.

144 LECTURE III.

her that the oracles of Ea, heard in the voice of the waves,
were communicated to man. Dav-kina is entitled " the
mistress of the oracular voice of the deep," and also " the
lady who creates the oracular voice of heaven."1 The
oracles delivered by the thunder, the voice of heaven,
thus became the reflex of the oracles delivered through
the roaring of the sea.

We may see here an allusion to the doctrine of a
watery abyss above the sky, of "the waters above the
firmament," that is, of which we read in Genesis. The
sky must have been looked upon as but another earth
which floated on the surface of an ocean-stream just as
did the nether earth itself. Hence in the theology of
Eridu there was no room for a god of the sky. The
visible sky was only Dav-kina in another form.

"We can now understand why it was that in the theo
logy of Eridu the Sun-god was the offspring of Ea and
Dav-kina. The name that he bore there was Dumuzi or
Tammuz, "the only-begotten one," of whom I shall have
much to say in the next Lecture. At present I need
only remark that he was the primaeval Merodach ; the
Sun-god born of Ea who was called Merodach by the
Babylonians was called Tammuz (Dumuzi) by the people
of Eridu. Perhaps Merodach is after all nothing more
than "the god from Eridu." That he came originally
from Eridu we have already seen.

1 W. A. I. ii. 55. 56, 59. Perhaps the latter title should rather be
rendered "the lady of heaven whence the oracular voice is created."
In line 55, me-te, which is usually the equivalent offimatu, (< ornament,"
takes the place of me, just as in K 4245, Rev. 4, 5, where (AN) me sag-I*
and me-te-sag-L follow one another, sag being explained by ristu and
pani, L by the god Mul-lil, and AN me sag by NIB.

THE GODS OF BABYLOXTA. 146

The author of the hymn to the demiurge identifies
Ea with " father Bel." As "the lord of heaven and
earth," Ea was indeed a Baal or Bel to the Semites, to
whose age the hymn belongs. But the particular Bel
with whom the poet wishes to identify him was Mul-lil,
the supreme god and demiurge of Mpur (the modern
Mffer). In a list of the titles of Ea, we find it expressly
stated that he is one with " Mul-lil the strong."1 But
such an identification belongs to the later imperial age
of Babylonian history. Mul-lil was primitively a purely
local divinity, standing in the same relation to his wor
shippers at Nipur that Ea stood to his at Eridu.

Mul-lil signifies "the lord of the ghost- world." Lil
was an Accado-Sumerian word which properly denoted
"a dust-storm" or "cloud of dust," but was also applied
to ghosts, whose food was supposed to be the dust of
the earth, and whose form was like that of a dust-cloud.
The Accadian language possessed no distinction of gender,
and lil therefore served to represent both male and female
ghosts. It was, however, borrowed by the Semites under
the form of Ullum, and to this masculine they naturally
added the feminine lilatu. Originally this lilatu repre
sented what the Accadians termed "the handmaid of
the ghost" (Jcel-litta)^ of whom it was said that the III
had neither husband nor wife ; 3 but before long lilatu
was confounded with the Semitic lildtu, " the night,"
and so became a word of terror, denoting the night-demon

1 W. A. I. ii. 55, 20.

2 In W. A. I. iv. 16. 19-20, the Assyrian has "servant of the ghost"
(ardat li\li~\) for the Accadian /del tida-ltdra, "servant of the light-
coverer," while Idel lilla is rendered by lilatu.

3 W.A.I, ii. 17, 30.

L

146 LECTURE III.

who sucked the blood of her sleeping victims. In the
legend of the Descent of Istar into Hades, the goddess is
made to threaten that unless she is admitted to the realm
of the dead she will let them out in the form of vampires
to devour the living. From the Semitic Babylonians
the name and conception of Lilatu passed to the Jews,
and in the book of Isaiah (xxxiv. 14) the picture of
the ghastly desolation which should befall Iduma3a is
heightened by its ruined mounds being made the haunt
of Lilith. According to the Eabbis, Lilith had been
the first wife of Adam, and had the form of a beautiful
woman; but she lived on the blood of children whom
she slew at night.

The "lord of the ghost- world" extended his sway
over this nether earth also. He is therefore entitled
"the lord of the world," as well as "king of all the
spirits of the earth."1 According to one version of the
story of the Deluge, it was he who caused the waters of
the flood to descend from heaven, and who designed
the destruction of all mankind. "When Mul-lil/' we
are told, " approached and saw the ship (of Xisuthros),
he stood still and was filled with wrath against the gods
and the spirits of heaven.2 ' What soul has escaped there
from ? ' (he cried). t Let no man remain alive in the
great destruction.' ' It was then that Ea came forward
with words of wisdom, and protested against this attempt
of Mul-lil to confound the innocent with the guilty.

1 W. A. I. i. 9, 3.

2 We seem to have here a mythological reminiscence of the fact that
Mul-lil had originally been the god of the lower world and its hosts of
spirits, and that he was consequently in opposition to the gods of light
and the spirits of the upper air.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 147

"Let the sinner alone bear his sin; let the evil-doer
bear his own iniquity." And though the wrathful god
was pacified, so that Xisuthros and his companions were
allowed to escape from their threatened death, the rescued
hero did not forget the evil intentions of Mul-lil; but
when inviting the other gods to his sacrifice after his
descent from the ark, he specially excepted the god of
Nipur. "Let the (other) gods come to my altar, but
let Mul-lil not come to the altar, since he did not act
considerately, but caused a deluge and doomed my people
to destruction."

In these quotations I have called the god by his old
Accadian name, Mul-lil.1 But long before this account
of the Deluge was composed, even though in its present
form it probably reaches back more than 2000 years
before the Christian era, the Accadian Mul-lil had become
the Semitic Bel. His primitive attributes, however, still
adhered to him. He was still the god of the lower
world, whose messengers were diseases and nightmares
and the demons of night, and from whom came the
plagues and troubles that oppressed mankind. In a
magical text (W. A. I. iv. 1. 5, 6), Namtar, the plague-
demon, is called "'the beloved son of Mul-lil" — standing,
in fact, in the same relation to Mul-lil that Tammuz does
to Ea, and in the next line Mul-lil's wife is asserted to
be Nin-ki-gal or Allat, "the queen of the mighty land"
of Hades.

This magical text, however, is a good deal older than

1 Mul-lil was also known as En-lil in one of the Accado-Sumerian
dialects. En-lil was contracted into Illil according to W. A. I. v. 37, 21,
which explains the "I/VAii/os of Damascius (for which we should read
IAAIAA02).

L2

148 LECTURE III.

the time when the Semites adopted and transformed the
deities of the Accadians, or at all events it expresses the
ideas of that earlier period. "When the god of Nipur
became Semitic, his character underwent a change. As the
supreme deity of the state he was necessarily a Baal, but
the Semitic Baal embodied very different conceptions from
those which were associated with the Accadian Mul-lil.
It is true that, as I have just pointed out, his primitive
attributes still clung to him, but they were superadded
to other attributes which showed him to be the supreme
Sun-god of Semitic worship. That supreme Sun-god,
however, revealed himself to his worshippers under two
aspects ; he might be either the beneficent god who gave
life and light to the world, or he might be the fierce and
wrathful sun of summer who scorches all nature with his
heat, and sinks at night, like a ball of glowing metal, into
the darkness of the under-world. Necessarily it was
rather under the latter aspect that the Mul-lil of Mpur
became the Semitic Bel.

This is the Bel whose cult was carried to Assyria, and
whose name is mentioned frequently in the inscriptions
of Nineveh, where among other titles he bears that of
"father of the gods." This is a title which he received,
not in virtue of his primitive character, but because he
had become the Semitic Bel. He was distinguished from
the younger Bel of Babylon, Bel-Merodach, as BeAcrai/as
or BoXaOfy (Bel-ethan\ "the older Baal,"1 when Babylon
became the imperial city, and its Bel claimed to be the
father and head of the Babylonian gods. But the dis-

1 Comp. Baudissin, Studicn zur semitisclien Relifjlonsgescliichte, i.
p. 274. A god Bd-labnru, " the older Bel," is mentioned in the inscrip
tions of Assyria, who may be a form of Mul-lil.

THE GODS OP BABYLONIA. 149

tinction, as might be expected, was not always observed,
and the older and younger Bel are sometimes confounded
together.

The confusion was rendered the more easy by the fact
that the wife of the Bel of Mpur was addressed as Bilat,
and thus was undistinguished in name from Beltis of
Babylon. But she was in reality, as we have seen, the
queen of Hades, Mn-ki-gal as the Accadians called her,
or Allat as she is named in the Semitic texts.1 Allat is
interpreted "the unwearied;"2 like the Homeric epithet
of Hades, aSa/zao-ros, " the inflexible" divinity who ceases
not to deal on all sides his fatal blows. Her proper title,
however — that, at least, under which she had originally
been known at Mpur — was Mn-lil, "the lady of the
ghost-world."3 It is under this name that Assur-bani-
pal addresses her (W.A.I, ii. 66) as "the mistress of
the world, whose habitation is the temple of the library"
(i.e. the temple of Istar at Mneveh).4 As Allat, the

1 In a magical text (W. A. I. ii. 18, 40) ISTin-ki-gal is called the wife
of Mn-azu ; but that Nin-azu is merely a title of Mul-lil is shown by
W. A. I. ii. 57, 51, where " the star of Nin-azu" is identified with Adar.
In W. A. L ii. 59, 35, the wife of Mn-azu is termed Mn-NER-DA.

2 K204, ii. 9, allattum = nu-kusu. 3 W.A.I, ii. 19. 6.

4 E-barbar; see W. A. I. iii. 3, 40. For the meaning of barbar, "a
library," cp. W. A. I. ii. 48, 26. The word is a re-duplicated form of
bar or bdra, "to reveal," hence used in the senses of " white" (W.A.I,
iv. 21, 5) or "visible" (W. A. I. iv. 6, 46), and "an oracle" (W. A. I.
iv. 19, 48). The compound ideograph BAR-BAR is interpreted tabbak
rimka, "the outpouring of a libation," in S 924, 7, and Km. 2. 11.
149, 4, and mdni, "a hero," in W. A. L iv. 21. 30, 32. With the
latter signification it was read mas-mas, which is a title of Merodach
(K 100, 15, K 48, Obv. 18). Since, however, Merodach is called " the
lord of BAR-BAR-^'" in K 2546, Rev. 1, it is clear that the two senses
of the compound ideograph were played upon, as the reading here
must be sijp-ti, " an oracle." Between the time of Sennacherib and

150 LECTURE III.

goddess of Hades, she was a much-dreaded and formida
ble figure, who is described iu the legend of the Descent
of Istar as inflicting upon her sister-goddess all the pains
and diseases which emanated from her demoniac satellites.
The unfortunate Istar, stripped of her clothing and adorn
ments, is held up to the scorn of the lower world ; and
Namtar, the plague-demon, is ordered by Allat to smite
her with maladies in the eyes, in the sides, in the feet,
in the heart, in the head, and, in short, in all the limbs.
Throughout the legend Namtar appears as the messenger
of the infernal queen.

It is thus clear that, just as Eridu in southern Baby
lonia was the primitive seat of the worship of the Chal-
drean culture-god and of the civilisation with which his
name was connected, Nipur in northern Babylonia was
the original home of a very different kind of worship,
which concerned itself with ghosts and demons and the
various monsters of the under-world. It was, in fact,
the home of that belief in magic, and in the various
spirits exorcised by the magician, which left so deep an
impression upon the religion of early Babylonia, and
about which I shall have to speak in a future Lecture.
The analogy of Eridu would lead us to infer, moreover,
that it was not only the home of this belief, but also the
source from which it made its way to other parts of the
country. In the pre-historic age, Eridu in the south
and Nipur in the north would have been the two religious
centres of Babylonian theology, from whence two wholly
different streams of religious thought and influence spread

tAssur-bani-pal, the library of Nineveh seems to have "been transferred
from, the temple of Istar to that of Nubo ; see above; p. 9.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 151

and eventually blended. The mixture formed what I
may call the established religion of Chaldsea in the pre-
Semitic period.

That this conclusion is not a mere inference is shown
by the monuments discovered at Tel-loh. Tel-loh was
geographically nearer to Eridu than to Nipur, and its
theology might therefore be expected to be more largely
influenced by that of Eridu than by that of Nipur. And
such, indeed, is the case. Temples and statues are
dedicated to Ea, "the king of Eridu," and more espe
cially to Bahu, a goddess who occupied a conspicuous
place in the cosmological legends of Eridu. But Mul-lil,
the god of Mpur, appears far more frequently in the
inscriptions of Tel-loh than we should have anticipated.
Mn-kharsak, "the mistress of the mountain," and "mo
ther of the gods," in whom we may see a local divi
nity, is associated with him as wife ; and Nin-girsu him
self, the patron god of Tel-loh, is made his "hero" or
" champion." So close, indeed, is the connection of the
latter with Mul-lil, that the compilers of the mythological
tablets, in a latter age, identified him with the " warrior"
god of Nipur, Adar the son of Mul-lil.

Adar, or Ninep, or Uras — for his name has been read
in these various fashions, and the true reading still remains
unknown1 — played a conspicuous part in Babylonian, and

1 The only form out of these three which is monumentally esta
blished is Uras. Uras is given as the pronunciation of the second
ideograph in the name of the god (W. A. I. iii. 70, 203 — 207, ii. 54,
34) ; and in W. A. I. ii. 57, 31, Uras is expressly stated to be the name
of NIN-IP, as "god of light" (uddaiie, see ii. 62, 36, where there is a
play on the Assyrian bar a, "fat," and baru, "to reveal"). From uras
the Assyrians borrowed their urasu, "a mourning veil" (v. 28, 60).
Ir and NIN-IP were two primaeval deities who in Accadian cosmology

152 LECTUEE III.

more especially Assyrian theology. He was regarded
as emphatically the warrior and champion of the gods,
and as such was naturally a favourite object of worship
amongst a nation of warriors like the Assyrians. Indeed,
it may be suspected that the extent to which the name
of the older Bel was reverenced in Assyria was in some
measure due to the favour in which his son Adar was
held. In the inscriptions of Mneveh, the title of " hero-
god" (masu) is applied to him with peculiar frequency;
this was the characteristic upon which the Assyrian
kings more particularly loved to dwell. In Babylonia,
on the other hand, Adar was by no means so favourite a
divinity. Here it was the milder and less warlike Mero-
dach that took his place. The arts of peace, rather than
those of war, found favour among the Semitic population
of the southern kingdom.

Originally, like Merodach, Adar had been a solar deity.
We are distinctly told that he was " the meridian sun,"1
whose scorching heats represented the fiercer side of Baal-
worship. But whereas Merodach was the sun conceived
of as rising from the ocean-stream, Adar was the sun

represented the male and female principles, but the genderless character
of the Accadian nin, "lord" or "lady," caused the Semites to change
NIN-IP into a god and identify him with IP, that is, "Anu who listens
to prayer" (ii. 54, 35). As u signified "lord" in Accadian, it would
seem that they further identified the first syllable of U-ras with the
nin of Nin-Uras. Hence " the Assyrian king," Horus of Pliny (N. H.
xxx. 51, cp. xxxvii. 52), who discovered a cure for drunkenness, as
well as the Thouras of Kedrenos (Hist. 15, 16, cp. Suidas and the
Paschal Chron. p. 68), who is called the Assyrian Ares and made the
son of Zames or Samas. The reading Adar is derived from the Biblical
Adrammelech, but it is quite certain that it is false, and I have retained
it in the text only on account of its employment by other Assyriologists.

1 W. A. I. ii. 57. 51, 76 (where he is identified with Manner).

THE GOBS OF BABYLONIA. 153

who issues forth from the shades of night. His wife
accordingly is "the lady of the dawn."1 Like all solar
deities in Babylonia, an oracle was attached to his shrine.
His name is explained to mean " the lord of the oracle,"2
and one of his titles was "the voice" or "oracle supreme." 3
It was on this account that later mythologists identified
him with Nebo,4 though between the Sun-god of Mpur
and the prophet- deity of Borsippa there was originally
no sort of connection. On the other hand, it must have
been his solar character that gave rise to the two curious
titles of "lord of the date"5 and "lord of the pig."6
The latter title was naturally dropped in the Semitic
period of Chaldeean history.

Adar bears the same relation to Mul-lil that Merodach
bears to Ea. Each alike is the son and messenger of the

1 W. A. I. ii. 59, 10.

2 W. A. I. ii. 57, 17. It is clear that the compiler of the mytho
logical list here interpreted ~baru> the equivalent of uras, in the sense
of " a revelation" or " oracle," and read his title in Assyria not as Masu,
" a hero," but as Baru, " the oracular god." It illustrates the same
play upon the ideographic writing of the god's name as that which we
hnd in BAR-BAR or MAS-MAS for Merodach.

3 W. A. I. ii. 57, 26. 4 W. A. I. ii. 57, 18.

5 W. A. I. ii. 57, 28.

6 W. A. I. ii. 57, 39. In K 161, i. 8, one of the remedies prescribed
for disease of the heart is siru AN Nin-pes, " swine's flesh." Rimmon,
when worshipped as Matu (Martu), was also known as khumuntsir,
the Accadised form of the Semitic Jchumtsiru, " a pig" (W. A. I. iii.
68, 70). The title " lord of the pig" connects Adar with the Ares of
Greek mythology, who in the form of the wild boar slew the Sun-god
Tammuzj while the title "lord of the date" — the chief fruit of Baby
lonia — reminds us of Cain, who was " a tiller of the ground." Under
the name of Baru, Adar was identified with iron, since the name of
" iron" was denoted in Accadian by bar, " the shining" (see W. A. I. v.
30, 52), which was written with the determinative of divinity, indica
tive of the meteoric origin of the first iron worked in Babylonia.

154 LECTURE III.

older god. But whereas the errands upon which Mero-
dach is sent are errands of mercy and benevolence, the
errands of Adar are those that befit an implacable war
rior. He contends not against the powers of darkness,
like Merodach, for the father whose orders he obeys is
himself the ruler of the powers of darkness ; it is against
mankind, as in the story of the Deluge, that his arms are
directed. He is a solar hero who belongs to the darkness
and not to the light.

It is thus that one of his brothers is "the first-born"
of Mul-lil, Mul-nugi, " the lord from whom there is no
return."1 Mul-nugi is the lord of Hades, the god who
is called Irkalla in the legend of the Descent of Istar,
and out of whose hands there is no escape. It may be
that he is but another form of the Moon-god, since the
Moon-god, we are told, was also the eldest son of Mul-lil.
But the name by which the Moon-god went at Mpur
was one that signified "the god of glowing fire."2 It is
curious to find the mythologists identifying this "god
of glowing fire" with Adar; but the error was natural;
both alike were sons of Mul-lil, and both alike represented
the great orbs of heaven.

1 See the Deluge-tablet, col. i. 1. 17. In W. A. I. iii. 68, 7, he is
called " the throne-bearer of Mul-lilla," and he would therefore seem to
have been one of "the throne-bearers" of the Deluge-tablet (col. ii. 45)
who " went over mountain and plain" carrying destruction with them.
Irkalla seems to be a Semitic form of a Proto-Chaldsean word. In
W.A.I, v. 16, 80, irJfcdlum is the rendering of the Accadian kesda,
"an enclosure" (comp. ii. 29, 63) ; and since the queen of Hades was
known as Nin-ki-gal, " the lady of the great country," while uru-gal or
ert-galy " the great city," was the Accadian designation of Hades or the
tomb (W. A. I. ii. 1. 191; 30. 13), it is possible that Irkalla represents
an earlier Eri-galla.

2 W. A. I. ii. 57, 56.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 155

The chief scat, however, of the worship of the Moon-
god was not Mpur but Ur (the modern Mugheir). Here
stood the great temple the ruins of which were partially
explored by Loftus. Already in the oldest documents
that have come from thence, the god to whom the temple
was consecrated is identified with the Moon-god of Mpur.
Already he is termed "the first-born of Mul-lil." The
spread of the cult of Mul-lil, therefore, and of the magic
which it implied, must have made its way as far south
as Ur in a very remote age. But we have no reason for
believing that the Moon-god of Ur and the Moon-god of
Mpur were originally one and the same. Each Baby
lonian town, large and small, had its own local Moon-god,
whose several names are recorded on a broken tablet.1
The forms under which the Moon-god was worshipped
in Babylonia were as numerous as the forms of the Sun-
god himself.

What seems yet more singular to the comparative
mythologist is that, according to the official religion of
Chalda3a, the Sun-god was the offspring of the Moon-god.
Such a belief could have arisen only where the Moon-god
was the supreme object of worship. It is a reversal of
the usual mythological conception which makes the moon
the companion or pale reflection of the sun. It runs
directly counter to the Semitic Baal-worship. To the
Semite the Sun-god was the lord and father of the gods ;
the moon was either his female consort, or, where Semitic
theology had been influenced by that of Chalda3a, an
inferior god.

But the belief was thoroughly in harmony with a
theology which admitted Mul-lil and his ghost-world to

1 AY. A. I. ii. 57, 56 */.

156 LECTURE III.

the highest honours of the pantheon. With such a theo
logy it was natural that the sun should be regarded as
issuing forth from the darkness of night. And the moon
was necessarily associated with the night. Indeed, in
one passage1 the Moon-god is actually identified with
the plague-demon Namtar, who was, as we have seen,
the messenger of the queen of hell. Moreover, the Baby
lonians were a nation of astronomers. Their astrology
was closely allied to their magic, and the lofty towers of
their temples were used for the observation of the sky.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that the cult of the moon
should occupy a foremost place in their creed, or that
the moon should be conceived as a male and not as a
female divinity.

It was at Ur, however, that the Moon-god was placed
at the head of the divine hierarchy, and it was from Ur
that the ideas spread which caused him to be addressed
as "the father of the gods." At Ur, in fact, he held
the same place that Mul-lil held at Mpur; but while
Mul-lil seems to have represented the dark sky of night,
the Moon-god was the luminary which shed light upon
the darkness. He was known at Ur as Nanak or Nannar,2

1 W. A. I. ii. 57, 79. Unfortunately, the name of the city where this
\vas the case is lost. The " Lady who decides destiny," who is identi
fied with the impersonal "Mistress of the gods" of Semitic worship
(W. A. I. ii. 55, 8), introduces us to a wholly different conception, and
the later softening of the plague-demon into a mere instrument of
destiny.

2 The reading is given by 82. 8 — 16. 1, Obv. 3. Nannakos was
supposed to be an antediluvian king who predicted the flood (Zen.
6, 10, Steph. Byz. s.v. 'IKOVLOV) ; the name, like the legend of the ark
at Aparneia or of Sisythes (Xisuthros) at Hierapolis (Membij), probably
came into Asia Minor through the medium of the Hittites. Compare
the claim of the Arkadians to be TrpocreA^voi (Scol. Aristoph. Nub. 398).

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 157

a name which the Semites by a popular etymology after
wards connected with their word namaru, "to see;" so
that we find Nabonidos addressing the Moon-god of
Harran as " the light of heaven and earth" (nannari same
u irtsitini). In later days, both Nanak and Nannar, like
other of the Babylonian gods, passed into heroes and
human kings. Nannakos was transported into Phrygia,
and Nannaros became a satrap of Babylonia under the
Median monarch Artaios — a personage, it need hardly
be observed, unknown to actual history. The Persian
legend, as handed down by Ktesias, is as follows : x

" There was a Persian of the name of Parsondes,2 in the service of
the king of the Medes, an eager huntsman, and active warrior on foot
and in the chariot, distinguished in council and in the field, and of
influence with the king. Parsondes often urged the king to make him
satrap of Babylon in the place of Nannaros, who wore women's clothes
and ornaments, but the king always put the petition aside, for it could
not be granted without breaking the promise which his ancestor had
made to Belesys. Nannaros discovered the intentions of Parsondes,
and sought to secure himself against them, and to take vengeance. He
promised great rewards to the cooks who were in the train of the king,
if they succeeded in seizing Parsondes and giving him up. One day,
Parsondes in the heat of the chase strayed far from the king. He had
already killed many boars and deer, when the pursuit of a wild ass
carried him to a great distance. At last he came upon the cooks, who
were occupied in preparations for the king's table. Being thirsty,
Parsondes asked for wine; they gave it, took care of his horse, ard
invited him to take food — an invitation agreeable to Parsondes, who
had been hunting the whole day. He bade them send the ass which
he had captured to the king, and tell his own servants where he was.
Then he ate of the various kinds of food set before him, and drank

1 I quote from the English translation of Duncker's History of
Antiquity, v. pp. 298 sq.

2 The name of Parsondes is probably taken from the important town
of Parsindu, among the mountains of the Namri, on the high-road to
Ekbatana (W. A. I. i. 21. 69, 70).

158 LECTURE III.

abundantly of the excellent wine, and at last asked for his horse in
order to return to the -king. But they brought beautiful women to
him, and urged him to remain for the night. He agreed, and as soon
as, overcome by hunting, wine and love, he had fallen into a deep
sleep, the cooks bound him and brought him to Nannaros. Nannaros
reproached him with calling him an effeminate man, and seeking to
obtain his satrapy ; he had the king to thank that the satrapy granted
to his ancestors had not been taken from him. Parsondes replied that
he considered himself more worthy of the office, because he was more
manly and more useful to the king. But Nannaros swore by Bel and
Mylitta that Parsondes should be softer and whiter than a woman,
called for the eunuch who was over the female players, and bade him
shave the body of Parsondes, and bathe and anoint him every day, put
women's clothes on him, plait his hair after the manner of women,
paint his face, and place him among the women who played the
guitar and sang, and to teach him their arts. This was done, and soon
Parsondes played and sang better at the table of Nannaros than any of
the women. Meanwhile the king of the Medes had caused search to
be made everywhere for Parsondes ; and since he could nowhere be
found, and nothing could be heard of him, he believed that a lion or
some other wild animal had torn him when out hunting, and lamented
for his loss. Parsondes had lived for seven years as a woman in Baby
lon, when Nannaros caused an eunuch to be scourged and grievously
maltreated. This eunuch Parsondes induced by large presents to retire
to Media and tell the king the misfortune which had come upon him.
Then the king sent a message commanding Nannaros to give up Par
sondes. Nannaros declared that he had never seen him. But the
king sent a second messenger, charging him to put Nannaros to death
if he did not surrender Parsondes. Nannaros entertained the mes
senger of the king ; and when the meal was brought, 150 women entered,
of whom some played the guitar, while others blew the flute. At the
end of the meal, Nannaros asked the king's envoy which of all the
women was the most beautiful and had played best. The envoy pointed
to Parsondes. Nannaros laughed long and said, ' That is the person
whom you seek,' and released Parsondes, who on the next day returned
home with the envoy to the king in a chariot. The king was asto
nished at the sight of him, and asked why he had not avoided such
disgrace by death. Parsondes answered, ' In order that I might see you
again and by you execute vengeance on Nannaros, which could never
have been mine had I taken my life.' The king promised him that
his hope should not be deceived, as soon as he came to Babylon. But

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 159

when he came there, Nannaros defended himself on the ground that
Parsondes, though in no way injured by him, had maligned him, and
sought to obtain the satrapy over Babylonia. The king pointed out
that he had made himself judge in his own cause, and had imposed a
punishment of a degrading character; in ten days he would pronounce
judgment upon him for his conduct. In terror, Nannaros hastened
to Mitraphernes, the eunuch of greatest influence with the king, and
promised him the most liberal rewards, 10 talents of gold and 100
talents of silver, 10 golden and 200 silver bowls, if he could induce
the king to spare his life and retain him in the satrapy of Babylonia.
He was prepared to give the king 100 talents of gold, 1000 talents of
silver, 100 golden and 300 silver bowls, and costly robes with other
gifts ; Parsondes also should receive 100 talents of silver and costly
robes. After many entreaties, Mitraphernes persuaded the king not to
order the execution of Nannaros, as he had not killed Parsondes, but
to condemn him in the penalty which he was prepared to pay Parson
des and the king. Nannaros in gratitude threw himself at the feet of
the king ; but Parsondes said, * Cursed be the man who first brought
gold among men ; for the sake of gold I have been made a mockery to
the Babylonians.'"

After this thoroughly characteristic example of the
way in which Persian euhemerism turned the mythology
of their neighbours into fictitious history, it requires an
effort to go back to the sober facts of the old cuneiform
tablets. ]N"annaros, or Nannar, however, was originally
no satrap of a Median king, but the supreme god of Ur,
in whose honour hymns were composed and a ritual per
formed similar to that carried on in honour of Merodach
at Babylon. Thanks to the piety of the chief scribe of
Assur-bani-pal, Istar-sum-esses, one of these hymns has
been preserved to us in an almost complete state. Tho
Accadian original is accompanied by an interlinear Semi
tic translation, both of which the chief scribe claims to
have accurately reproduced. The hymn runs thus : 1

1 W. A. I. iv. 9. The translation given by Dr. Opport of this hymn
in his Fragments mytholoyiqiies is full of errors, and frequently mistakes
the meaning of the lines.

160 LECTURE III.

1. "Lord and prince of the gods who in heaven and earth alone

is supreme !

2. Father Nannar, lord of the firmament, prince of the gods !

3. Father Nannar, lord of heaven,1 mighty one, prince of the gods !

4. Father Nannar, lord of the moon,2 prince of the gods !

5. Father Nannar, lord of Ur, prince of the gods !

6. Father Nannar, lord of the Temple of the mighty Light, prince

of the gods !

7. Father Nannar, who biddest the crowned disk to rise, prince

of the gods !

8. Father Nannar, who makest the crowned disk3 fully perfect,

prince of the gods !

9. Father Nannar, who sweeps away with a blow invincible, prince

of the gods !

10. Strong ox, whose horn is powerful, whose limbs are perfect,

whose beard is of crystal, whose member is full of virility ;

11. Its fruit is generated of itself; its eye is bent down to behold

(its) adornment ; its virility is never exhausted.

12. Merciful one, begetter of the universe, who founds (his) illus

trious seat among living creatures.4

13. Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness,5 whose hand

upholds the life of all mankind !

1 3 Lord, thy divinity like the far-off heaven fills the wide sea with
fear.

14. On the surface of the peopled earth he bids the sanctuary be

placed, he proclaims their name.

15. Father, begetter of gods and men, who causes the shrine to be

founded, who establishes the offering.

16. Who proclaims dominion, who gives the sceptre, who shall

fix destiny unto a distant day.6

1 The Semitic translator has mistaken the sense of the original and
supposed that the god Anu was intended by the poet. Hence he iden
tifies the Moon-god with Assoros (the firmament) and Anu.

2 Here again the translator has erroneously rendered " the lord Sin."
8 Here the translator has completely mistaken the sense of the ori
ginal and has rendered "royalty" !

4 Such seems to be the meaning of the Semitic translation. The
original is : " among men far and wide he erects the supreme shrine."

5 The Accadian is literally, " long-suffering in waiting."

6 So in the translation. The original is : " who gives the sceptre to
those whose destiny is fixed unto a distant day."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 161

17. First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is

none who may discover it.1

18. Firm are his limbs (?) ; his knees rest not; he opens the path

of the gods his brethren.

19. (He is the god) who makes the light from the horizon to the

zenith of heaven, opening wide the doors of the sky, and
establishing light (in the world).

20. Father, begetter of the universe, illuminator of living beings

.... sender of ....

21. Lord, the ordainer of the laws of heaven and earth, whose

command may not be (broken).

22. Thou holdest the rain and the lightning,2 defender of all living

things ; there is no god who hath at any time discovered thy
fulness.

23. In heaven who is supreme 1 Thou alone, thou art supreme.

24. On earth who is supreme ? Thou alone, thou art supreme.

25. As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels

bow their faces.

26. As for thee, thy will is made known upon earth, and the

spirits below kiss the ground.

27. As for thee, thy will is blown on high like the wind; the

stall and the fold3 are quickened.

28. As for thee, thy will is done upon the earth, and the herb

grows green.

29. As for thee, thy will is seen in the lair4 and the shepherd's

hut ; it increases all living things.

30. As for thee, thy will hath created law and justice, so that

mankind has established law.

31. As for thee, thy will is the far-off heaven, the hidden earth

which no man hath known.5

1 In the original : " his heart is far-extended : none shall describe
the god."

2 The order is reversed in the Semitic translation.

3 Rttu u maskitum, which are explained in 79. 7-8. 5. Other ren
derings of U-A given in this tablet are epiru, " dust ;" subat nakri, " the
seat of a stranger ;" and zaninu, " the nourisher." For ritu, see K 4872.
54, 7 ; it is a derivative from the root of rieu, "a shepherd."

4 Tarbatsu ; the first syllable has been omitted in the printed text.

5 The original Accadian is literally : " they will extend (as) heaven,
it stretches below (as) earth, there are none who can record (it)."

M

162 LECTURE III.

32. As for thee, who can learn thy will, who can rival it ?

33. 0 lord, in heaven (is thy) lordship, in the earth (is thy)

sovereignty \ among the gods thy brethren a rival thou
hast not.

34. King of kings, of whose .... no man is judge, whose divinity

no god resembles.
[The next three lines are too broken for translation.]

38. Look with favour on thy temple !

39. Look with favour on Ur (thy city).

40. Let the high-born dame ask rest of thee, 0 lord.

41. Let the free-born man, the .... ask rest of thee, 0 lord !

42. 43. Let the spirits of heaven and earth (ask rest of thee), 0

lord!"

[The last few lines are destroyed.]

COLOPHON. — " Like its old copy copied and published.

Tablet of Istar-sum-esses, chief scribe of Assur-bani-pal, the
king of legions, the king of Assyria, and son of Nebo-zir-esir, chief
of the penmen."

As the original language of this hymn is the Accadian
of northern Babylonia, and not the Sumerian of the south,
it would seem that the priesthood and population of Ur
were derived from the north, and not from the geogra
phically nearer region of which Eridu was the head.
This will explain the relationship they discovered be
tween their own supreme deity and the god of Mpur.
Ur was either a northern colony or had become incor
porated in the northern kingdom,1 and its local god
accordingly became the first-born of Mul-lil. It is pos
sible that the hymns of which I have just given a
specimen were influenced by Semitic ideas ; at all events,
throughout the northern part of Chalda3a, wherever the
Accadian dialect of the north was spoken, a strong j

i

i

1 This latter is the more probable explanation, since the Accadian of
the hymn is really that artificial language which grew up in the court
of Sargon.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 163

Semitic element seems to have existed in the population
from an early period ; and of Ur of the Casdim we are
specially told that it was the birth-place of the Semitic
Abraham.

Now Abraham, it will be remembered, migrated from
Ur to Harran, in northern Mesopotamia. The distance
between the two cities appears considerable, and yet
there was a very real connection between them. Like
Ur, Harran also was a city of the Moon-god, and the
temple of the Moon-god in Harran rivalled that at Ur.
Nay, more ; Harran was as closely connected with Baby
lonian history and religion as was Ur itself. Its name
recurs in early Babylonian texts, and is indeed of Acca-
dian origin, Kliarran being the Accadian word for "road,"
and denoting the city which lay on the great highway
from Chaldsea to the west. The mythologists of Baby
lonia entitled the planet Mercury "the spirit of the
men of Harran;"1 and Nabonidos boasts of his restoration
of "the temple of the Moon-god in Harran, in which
from time immemorial the Moon-god, the mighty lord,
had placed the seat of the goodness of his heart." Gems
show us what the image of the god was like. It was
a simple cone of stone, above which blazed the star of
the moon, such as we see depicted on the seals and
monuments of Assyria and Babylonia. Sargon couples
together Assur and Harran, whose ancient customs he
claims to have restored, and declares that he had " spread
his shadow over Harran, and by the will of Anu and
Dagon had written (again) its laws." Shalmaneser III.
and Assur-bani-pal had rebuilt the temple of the Moon-

1 W. A. T. iii. 67, 28.

164 LECTURE III.

god there which, bore the Accadian name of E-Khulkhul,
"the house of rejoicing," and neither they nor Nabo-
nidos seem to have had any doubt that the Moon-god
worshipped therein was the same as the Moon-god wor
shipped in Assyria and Babylonia.

Whether this were primitively the case must remain
an open question. It is more probable that the Moon-
god of Harran was originally as much a local divinity
as the Moon-god of Ur, unless, indeed, Harran had been
itself the foundation of the kings of Ur in their early
campaigns to the west. But the leading place won by
Ur at the time when its kings made themselves masters
of the whole of Babylonia, caused the Moon-god of Ur
to supplant the Moon- gods of the other cities of the
country, just as the rise of Babylon caused Merodach to
supplant the other Sun-gods of Chaldeea. With the
growth of the Semitic power in Babylonia, the influence
of the Moon-god of Ur became greater and more exten
sive. Nannar was now invoked as Sin — a name which
at first appears to have denoted the orb of the moon only l
— and the name and worship of Sin spread not only in
Babylonia, but in other parts of the Semitic world. His
name has been found in an inscription of southern Arabia,
and Sinai itself, the sacred mountain, is nothing more
than the sanctuary " dedicated to Sin." It may be that
the worship of the Babylonian Moon-god was brought
to the peninsula of Sinai as far back as the days when
the sculptors of Tel-loh carved into human shape the
blocks of diorite they received from the land of Magan.

1 Whether the name of Sin is of Accadian or Semitic origin must at
present remain an open question. At all events, I cannot believe that
it is a Semitic corruption of an Accadian Zu-en.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 165

However this may be, the Moon-god of Ur, like the
city over which he presided, took primary rank among
the Babylonians. His worshippers invoked him as the
father and creator of both gods and men. It is thus that
Nabonidos celebrates his restoration of the temple of
Sin at Harran: "May the gods who dwell in heaven
and earth approach the house of Sin, the father who
created them. As for me, Nabonidos, king of Babylon,
the completer of this temple, may Sin, the king of the
gods of heaven and earth, in the lifting up of his kindly
eyes, with joy look upon me month by month at noon
and sunset; may he grant me favourable tokens, may
he lengthen my days, may he extend my years, may he
establish my reign, may he overcome my foes, may he
slay my enemies, may he sweep away my opponents.
May Mn-gal, the mother of the mighty gods, in the
presence of Sin, her loved one, speak like a mother. May
Samas and Istar, the bright offspring of his heart, to
Sin, the father who begat them, speak of blessing. May
Nuzku, the messenger supreme, hearken to my prayer
and plead for me."

The moon existed before the sun. This is the idea
which underlay the religious belief of Accad, exact con
verse, as it was, of the central idea of the religion of the
Semites. It was only where Accadian influence was
strong that the Semite could be brought in any way to
accept it. It was only in Babylonia and Assyria and on
the coasts of Arabia that the name of Sin was honoured ;
elsewhere the attributes of the Moon-god were transferred
to the goddess Istar, who, as we shall see hereafter, was
originally the evening star. But in Babylonia, Sin became
inevitably the father of the gods. His reign extended

166 LECTURE III.

'to the beginning of history ; Sargon, as the representative
of the Babylonian kings and the adorer of Merodach,
speaks of "the remote days of the period of the Moon-
god," which another inscription makes synonymous with
"the birth of the land of Assur."1 As the passage I
have quoted from Nabonidos shows, Sin was more parti
cularly the father of Samas and Istar, of the Sun-god
and the goddess of the evening star.

But who was this Sun-god who was thus the offspring
of Sin ? The Sun-gods of Babylonia were as numerous
as its Moon-gods ; each city had its own ; who then was
the Samas who was so specially the son of the Moon-god
of Ur ? The answer is not very easy to give. Geogra
phical considerations would lead us to think of the Sun-
god of Larsa, the modern Senkereh. Larsa was near Ur,
though on the opposite bank of the river, and its temple
of the Sun had been famous from pre-Semitic times.

1 Tsibit Assuri, W. A. I. iii. 11. ii. 32. Oppert is right against
George Smith and Lenormaut in holding that adi Sin in the first-
quoted passage (Khors. 110) cannot be a proper name, Adi-Ur (!). A
fragmentary tablet (quoted on p. 62 of George Smith's Chaldean
Genesis, ed. Sayce) contained a legend about the foundation of the city
of Assur and its two temples, E-Sarra, the temple of Adar, and E-Lusu.
"We read (line 6) : " The god Assur (AN KHI) opened his mouth and
says ; to the god Khir . . . (he speaks) : ' above the deep (elinu aps^)
the seat (of Ea), before (mikhrit) E-Sarra which I have built, below
the shrine (asrata) I have made strong, let me construct E-Lusu the
seat of (the god . . .), let me found (lusarsid) within it his fortress . . .
when (the god) ascends from the deep them didst prepare a place (that
was still) unfinished . . . thou didst establish in Assur (D. P. PAL-BAT-
KI) the temples of the great gods . . . .' to his father Anu even to him
(a[na s]asu) (he spoke) : ' The god . . . has (appointed ?) thee over
whatsoever thy hand has made, whatever thy (hand) possesses ; over
the earth that thy hand has made, whatever (thy hand) possesses ; the
city of Assur whose name thou hast given (sa tazkura sum-su), the
place (which) thou hast made exalted for ever' (tamdi darisam)."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 167

But there is a special reason which makes it probable
that the Sun-god of Larsa was the deity whose father
was Sin. The temple of Sin at Ur, the ruins of which
are still in existence, had been founded by Ur-Bagas,
the first monarch of united Babylonia of whom we know.
His monuments have been met with at Mugheir, at Larsa,
at Warka, at Niffer, and at Zerghul; and his bricks
show that he was the founder — or more probably the
restorer — not only of the great temple of the Moon-god
at Ur, but also of those of the Sun-god at Larsa, of Mul-
lil at Mpur, and of Anu and Istar at Erech. Under his
rule, therefore, the unity of the empire found its religious
expression in the union of the worship of the Moon-god
of Ur with that of the Sun-god of Larsa. As the domi
nant state, Ur necessarily stood to Larsa and Erech in the
relation of a metropolis, and its god thus became the pro
genitor of the gods of Larsa and Erech. The Sun- god of
Larsa, like the Istar of Erech, became accordingly the
child of Mannar or Sin.

It was as Kur(?)-nigin-gara, " the god who makes the
palace (of the setting sun)," that the Sun-god of Larsa
seems to have been known to his worshippers in pre-
Semitic days.1 But when the Accadian was superseded
by the Semite, his special name was merged in the general
title of Samsu or Samas, "the Sun." He became the
Baal of Larsa, who differed but little, save in the name
by which he was addressed, from the other Baalim of
Babylonia.

The fame of the Samas of Larsa, however, was obscured
at an early period by that of the Samas of Sippara. Sip-

1 W.A.I. ii. 60, 12.

163 LECTURE III.

para in historical times was pre-eminently the city of the
Sun-god. It was there that E-Babara, "the house of
lustre," the great temple of the Sun-god,1 had been erected
in days to which tradition alone went back, and it was
around its shrine that Semitic sun-worship in Babylonia
was chiefly centred. Sippara and its immediate neigh
bourhood had been the seat of early Semitic supremacy
in Chaldsea. It was, it is true, of pre-Semitic foundation ;
its primitive name Zimbir would show this, like the name
of E-Babara itself ; and we know that Samas had once
been worshipped within its walls under the Accadian
title of Babara or Birra. But in these remote days Sip-
para was probably an insignificant town ; at all events,
the memory of later ages knew of Sippara only in connec
tion with the empire of Sargon of Accad and the Semitic
version of the story of the Deluge.2

In the Old Testament, Sippara appears as a dual city —
Sepharvaim, " the two Sipparas." One of these has been
discovered in the mounds of Abu-Habba by Mr. Hormuzd
Eassam, who has brought from it a monument on which

1 The temple of the Sun-god at Larsa was also known as E-babara
(W. A.I. i. 65, 42); its ziggurmt was called "the house of the bond
of heaven and earth" (ii. 50, 19).

2 According to Berossos, Xisuthros had written a history of all that
had happened before the deluge and buried the books at Sippara, where
they were disinterred after the flood by his directions. The legend
seems to have been based partly on a popular etymology which con
nected Sippara with sipru, "a book" (Heb. sepher), partly on the fact
that the whole district was termed " the country of books," in conse
quence of its being the seat of the library of Sargon, whose city of
Accad formed a part of the double Sippara. That the story of the
deluge emanated in its present form from Sippara is indicated not
only by the legend of the burial of the books, but also by the fact that
the hero of it was " a man of Surippak," a small town close to Sippara.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 169

is carved a curious image of the divine solar disk. The
other has been found by Dr. Hayes Ward in the mounds
of Anbar, an hour's distance from Sufeirah and the
Euphrates. The fragment of a geographical tablet seems
indeed to mention no less than four Sipparas — Sippara
proper, Sippara of the desert, Sippara "the ancient,"1
and Sippara of the Sun-god;2 but since the historical
texts know of two only — Sippara of Anunit and Sippara
of Samas — it is best to regard the three first names as
alike denoting the same place, Sippara of Anunit, the
modern Anbar. It must have been from this Sippara
that the Euphrates received its title, "river of Sippara,"
since Abu-Habba is seven miles distant from the present
bed of the stream.

In the close neighbourhood of this double Sippara,
Sargon built or restored the city to which he gave a
name, and from which the whole of northern Babylonia
received its title of Accad. It is called Agadhe* in the
non-Semitic texts, Accad ( Akkadu) in the Semitic ; though
whether the name is of Semitic or non-Semitic origin
cannot at present be decided. Sargon's patronage of
literature, and the celebrated library he founded in Accad,
caused the district to be known as " the region of books." 3
A popular etymology afterwards connected the name of
Sippara itself with sepher, " a book," and the city accord-

1 Vl-dua rendered by tsatu, W. A.I. iv. 13, 24, and Msittu, v. 21,
14, K 4874. Obv. 21,22 (udu ul-dua udu ul-dua-lil = ki-ti-it-ti tsa-a-ti) •
comp. K4171. Rev. 9, 23, 28 (UDU UL-DUA-W supar pi sa Enuva SAL
SAKE).

2 Hayes Ward, Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, Oct.
1885.

3 W.A.I, ii. 51, 8.

170 LECTURE III.

ingly appears in the fragments of Berossos as Pantibibla,
or " Book-town."

With the spread and fame of the empire of Sargon,
the worship of Samas spread and became famous also.
The empire and the cult were alike Semitic ; wherever
the Semite planted himself, the Sun-god was worshipped
under some form and name. The extent, therefore, of
the worship of the Sun-god of Sippara marks the extent
and power of Sargon' s kingdom. The older Samas of
Larsa was eclipsed by the new deity; henceforward
Sippara, and not Larsa, was the chief seat of the adoration
of Samas in Babylonia. It is to Sippara in all probability
that the hymns addressed to the Sun-god belong. They
are the product of an age of new ideas and aspirations.
They represent the meeting and amalgamation of Semitic
and Accadian thought. The scribes and poets of Sargon's
court were partly Semites, partly Accadians; but the
Semites had received an Accadian education, and the
Accadians had learnt the language and imitated the style
of their Semitic masters. Though the originals of most
of the hymns are written in the old language of Accad —
a language that had become sacred to the Semites, and
in which alone the gods allowed themselves to be ad
dressed — the thoughts contained in them are for the
most part Semitic. We have no longer to do with a
Mul-lil, a lord of ghosts and demons, nor even with an
Ea, with his charms and sorceries for the removal of
human ills, but with the supreme Baal of Semitic faith,
the father and creator of the world, who was for his
adorer at the moment of adoration the one omnipotent

god. It is thus that we read : 1

~~M^A.I. iv. 19, 2.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 171

"To be recited.1 — 1. Lord, illuminator of the darkness, opener of
the sickly face,

2. Merciful god, who setteth up the fallen, who helpeth the weak,

3. Unto thy light look the great gods,

4. The spirits of earth all gaze upon thy face ;2

5. The language of hosts as one word thou directest,

6. Smiting their head they look to the light of the midday sun.8

7. Like a wife, art thou set, glad and gladdening.

8. Thou art the light in the vault of the far-off heaven.

9. Thou art the spectacle of the broad earth.

10. Men far and near behold thee and rejoice.

11. The great gods have smelt the sweet savour (of the sacrifice),

12. the food of the shining heaven, the blessings (of the gods).

13. He who has not turned his hand to sin (thou wilt prosper),

14. he shall eat thy food, (he shall be blessed by thee).J;

I.4 "Mighty lord, from the midst of the shining heaven is thy
rising ;

2. 0 Sun-god, valiant hero, from the midst of the shining heaven

is thy rising ;

3. In the enclosure of the shining heaven is the weapon of thy

falchion.

4. Where in the shining heavens is thy palace (kuinmi)^

5. In the great gate of the shining heavens, when thou openest (it),

1 EN, i.e. siptu, which at the commencement of these Semitic texts
no longer means so much "an incantation" as part of a service which
must be "recited" by the priest. Though some of the hymns may go
back to the time of Sargon, others, at all events in their present form,
must be considerably later.

2 " Head," in the Accadian original.

3 In the Semitic translation, simply " the Sun-god." The Accadian
original is literally, " they make obeisance of their head, and gazing,
0 light of the midday sun."

4 W. A. I. iv. 17.

5 (K)ummi-(ka). Kummu, which properly means "a palace," is
used specially of the palace of the Sun-god into which he returns at
sunset. Hence it is denoted in Accadian by the three ideographs
"hole-sun-below."

172 LECTURE III.

6. in the highest (summits) of the shining heavens, when thou

passest by,

7. (the angels ?) joyfully draw near to thee in prayer ....

8. (The ministers ?) of the queen of the gods attend thee with

rejoicing.

9. The .... for the repose of thy heart daily attend thee.

10. The .... of the hosts of the earth zealously regard thee.

11. The (hosts) of heaven and earth attend thee, even thee.
[The next few lines are too imperfect to be translated.]

18. With a bond are they united together straitly, (they that) are

with thee.

19. The divine man1 on behalf of his son attends thee, even thee,

at the head.2

20. (Worshipper.} — The lord has sent me, even me.

21. The great lord Ea has sent me, even me.

22. (Priest.) — Attend and learn his word, enjoin his command.

23. Thou in thy course directest the black-headed race (of Accad).

24. Cast on him a ray of mercy and let it heal his sickness.

25. The man, the son of his god,3 has committed sin and transgres

sion.

26. ( Worshipper.) — His limbs are sick, sick and in sickness he lies.

27. 0 Sun-god, utter thy voice at the lifting up of my hands.4

28. (Priest.) — Eat his food, receive his sacrifice, show thyself his

god.

29. By thine order let his sin be pardoned, his transgression removed.

30. Let his sickness quit his body (?), and let him live.

31. May he live like the king !

32. On the day that he lives (again) may he reverence thy supre

macy.

1 Does this refer to the first man, like the Yima-Kshaeta of the
Zend-Avesta *?

2 So in the Semitic translation. The original has "alone" (usues).

3 A common phrase in the bilingual poems, denoting the close attach
ment of the worshipper to his deity. There is no connection between
this idea and that embodied in the phrase, " the sons of God" (Gen.
vi. 2), or even in the statement that Adam was "the son of God"
(Luke iii. 38). But compare the expression, "a son of God," in Dan.
iii. 25.

4 In the original : " May the Sun-god look at the lifting up of my
hand."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 173

33. Like a king may thy judgment adjudge.1

34. Me also, the magician, thy servant, may thy judgment adjudge.

35. Conclusion (of the hymn). When the sun is up

36. (this is) to be recited.2 — I have cried to thee, 0 Sun-god, in the

midst of the glittering heaven ;

37. in the shadow of the cedar thou dwellest, and

38. thy feet are set on the bright verdure of the herb.

39. The word inclines towards thee, it loves thee as a friend.

40. Thy brilliant light illumines all men.

41. Overthrower of all that would overthrow thee, assemble the

nations,

42. 0 Sun-god, for thou art he who knoweth their boundaries.

43. Destroyer of the wicked, who inspirest the explanation3

44. of signs and evil omens, of dreams and baneful vampires,4

45. who turnest evil into good, who destroyest men and countries

46. that devote themselves to baneful sorceries, I humble myself (?)

before thee.

47. Of bright corn-stalks their images I have fashioned

48. who have practised magic and devised the binding spell

49. Terrify their heart and they are filled with dejection,

50. and abide thou, 0 Sun-god, the light of the mighty gods.

51. With the utmost of my breath let me rejoice.

52. May the gods who have created me take my hands ;

53. Purify my mouth, direct my hands,

54. do thou also direct, 0 lord of the light of hosts, 0 Sun-god the

judge."

1 KA (determinative of speech) &la Men-tile. For 6ila ( = saladhu
sa [arneh]), see W.A.I, ii. 39, 14. Comp. W.A.I, iv. 12. 31, 32,
and 29. 16—18, where &7a is rendered dalili. Tiglath-Pileser I. calls
himself dalil Hi rabi ana dalali, "judging according to the judgment
of the great gods." Delitzsch (Lotz's Tiglath-Pileser, p. 149) and
Zimmern (Busspsalmen, p. 74) have entirely missed the true meaning
of the expression.

2 The following incantation is in Semitic-Assyrian only, and was
probably appended to the old hymn in the time of Assur-bani-paL

3 Namtable.

4 Also called " (female) devourers of men," W. A. I. ii. 32, 77. Comp.
the legend of the Descent of Istar into Hades, line 19.

174 LECTURE ITT.

I.1 " Incantation.— 0 Sun-god, from the foundation of the sky
thou comest forth (tahhkhar\

2. a god whose journeying none can (rival),

3. a god who setteth at rest his father's heart.

4. Ea (Nu-dimmud) has enlarged for thee (thy) destiny among

the gods.

5. The seat (sulit) of the earth (he has filled) into thy hand.

6. The fear of thy divinity (overwhelms) the world.

7. From the .... the gods are born (1).

8. The Sun-god from the midst of heaven rises."

In the closing days of the Babylonian monarchy,
Nabonidos, after restoring the temple of the Sun-god at
Sippara, addresses him in the following words: "0
Samas, (mighty lord) of heaven and earth, light of the
gods his fathers, offspring of Sin and Mn-gal, when thou
enterest into E-Babbara, the temple of thy choice, when
thou inhabitest thy everlasting shrine, look with joy
upon me, Nabonidos, the king of Babylon, the prince
who has fed thee, who has done good to thy heart,
who has built thy dwelling-place supreme, and upon my
prosperous labours; and daily at noon and sunset, in
heaven and earth, grant me favourable omens, receive
my prayers, and listen to my supplications. May I be
lord of the firmly-established sceptre and sword, which
thou hast given my hands to hold, for ever and ever !"

Nabonidos, the Babylonian, the peculiar prote'ge' of
Merodach, could not regard Samas with the same eyes
as the old poets of the city of the Sun-god. His supreme
Baal was necessarily Merodach, whose original identity
with Samas had long since been forgotten ; and Samas of
Sippara was consequently to him only the Baal of another
and a subject state. Samas is therefore but one of the

1 S 690, Obv.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 175

younger gods, who illuminates his divine fathers in the
higher heaven. He shares the power and glory of his
fathers only as the son shares the authority of the father
in the human family. Nothing can illustrate more clearly
the local character of Babylonian religion than this dif
ference between the position assigned to Samas in the
hymns and in the inscription of Nabonidos. In the one,
he is the supreme god who brooks no equal \ in the other,
the subordinate of Merodach and even of the Moon-god
Sin.

As Semitic influence extended itself in Babylonia, the
Sun-god of Sippara came to absorb and be identified
with the numerous local solar deities of the Chaldean
cities. It was only where a solar divinity was wor
shipped by the Semitic race under another name, as at
Babylon or Eridu or Mpur, or where the Semites had
already adopted another deity as the supreme object of
their worship, as at Ur, that this process of absorption
and identification did not take place. At times the local
divinity became the son of Samas. Thus the Kosssean
Sun-god Kit, who had been introduced by the Kosssean
conquest, along with other gods like Simalia and Suga-
muna, under the Semitised name of Kittum, was made
his son,1 and Makhir, the god of dreams, through an
error occasioned by the want of any indices of gender in
Accadian, was termed his daughter.2

1 W. A. I. ii. 58, 11. The Semitic worshipper no doubt identified
the name with his own word kittum, " right."

2 W. A. I. ii. 58, 13. In v. 70. 1. 9. 15, on the contrary, Makhir
is a god. He was the god of revelation, since a knowledge of the
future was declared through dreams. Hence the Accadian me-gal-vu,
"knowledge of the oracle," is interpreted suttu pasaru, "to explain a

176 LECTURE III.

This absence of any marks to denote grammatical
gender, which Accadian shared with other agglutinative
languages, must have been a sore puzzle and difficulty
to the Semite when he first began to worship the gods
of his more cultured neighbours. Nin^ for instance, in
Proto-Chaldsean, signifies at once "lord" and "lady," its
primary meaning being "the great one." But the
whole grammatical thought of the Semite was based
upon a difference of gender. Not only were nouns dis
tinguished into masculines and feminines, as in our own
Indo-European family of speech; the distinction was
further carried into the verb. A masculine without a
feminine was as inconceivable to him as the man without
the woman, the husband without the wife, the father
without the mother. But as in Semitic grammar, so
also in the Semitic conception of social life, the male was
the source of life and authority, the female being but
his weaker double, the pale reflection as it were of the
man. The father was the head of the family, the supreme
creator was the masculine Bel. This was the exact con
verse of the ideas that prevailed among the Accadians.
Here it was the mother, and not the father, who stood at
the head of the family ; and in the bilingual texts we
find that in the Accadian original the female is always
mentioned before the male, while the Semitic translator
is careful to reverse the order. Woman in Accad occu
pied a higher position than she did, or does, among
the Semites.

The goddesses of Accad, accordingly, were independent

dream" (v. 30, 13), and Tcibu sakanu, "to establish a (divine) message"
(v. 30, 14). Suttu pasaru may, however, be read wjpartu pasaru, " to
explain a command."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 177

beings, like the gods whose equals they were. But it was
quite otherwise with the Semitic Babylonians. Except
where they had borrowed and more or less assimilated
an Accadian goddess, their female deities were simply
the complement of their male consorts — little more, in
fact, than the grammatical feminines of the gods. We
may almost say that they were created by grammatical
necessity. The Sun-god, therefore, as we have seen in
a former Lecture, was provided with his feminine com
plement, with his "face" or reflection, as it was some
times termed.

The Semites gave her the general title of Bilat matati,
"the lady of the world." It was the title of most of the
goddesses. They were seldom deemed worthy of a name
of their own ; they shone by the reflected light of their
consorts ; and as the supreme god of the worshipper was
Bel, and more especially Bil matati, "the lord of the
world," his wife was necessarily also Bilat or Beltis, and
more especially Bilat matati. Sometimes, too, she was
called Bilat Hi, "the lady of the gods," in reference to
the fact that the supreme Bel was their lord and master.

One of the Accadian solar divinities with whom the
Bilat matati, when regarded as the wife of Samas, was

A A

identified, was A or Sirrida.1 A had originally been a

1 A bilingual hymn to the Sun-god, which was recited by the priests
at sunset, has been translated by Mr. Pinches (Tr. Soc. Bibl. Arch.
viii. 2) as follows :

" 0 Sun-god, in the midst of heaven, in thy setting
may the bolts of the glorious heavens speak peace to thee !
may the door of the heavens be gracious to thee !
may Misaru, thy beloved messenger, guide thee !
At E-Parra, the seat of thy lordship, thy greatness shines forth.
May A, thy beloved wife, gladly receive thee !

N

178 LECTURE III,

male divinity representing the solar disk, " the light of
the sun" (Bir-Utu and Utu-TJtu), as he was also entitled
in Accadian. But the solar disk, the face as it were of
the Sun-god, was his female consort, according to the
religious conceptions of the Semites, and among them,
therefore, the old Accadian god was transformed into a
goddess. A, or Sirrida, thus became a Semitic goddess,
and sank into a colourless representative of the female
element in the divinity. The transformation was aided

may thy heart take rest !

may the glory of thy godhead be established to thee !

Warrior, hero, sun-god, may they glorify thee !

lord of E-Parra, may the course of thy path be true !

O Sun-god, make straight thy path, go the everlasting road to thy
rest.

0 Sun-god, of the country the judge, of her decisions the director

art thou."

The same hymn was also chanted in the morning, with the substitution
of " 0 Sun-god, from the glorious heaven rising," for the first line. It
was evidently originally intended for the temple of Samas at Sippara,
but came in later times to be used in the worship of Nebo at Borsippa,
Nebo being recognised as the local Sun-god of Borsippa.

The original Sumerian form of the name of A was Sirrigam. In
W. A.I. ii. 57. 21 — 31, we have examples of the various ways in
which it might be written : Sir-ri-ga-ma, Sur-ga-ma, 'Sir-ga-m, 'Sir-da-m
(Accadian\ Sir-da (NiR-da), 'Sir-gam with the ideograph of the sun
inserted, 'Sir-da-m (where the ideograph of the sun has the phonetic
value of da transferred to it). From line 26 it appears that A was
properly a title, meaning " the father." A gloss on line 28 reads Tsab-
Utu instead of Bir-Utu, but this is a mistake, since tsab was Semitic,
and signified "warrior" (erim in Accadian) and not "light." Pinches
(Proceedings of the Society of Bib. Archceologij, Nov. 1885) would
connect A with Yahveh ; but this, of course, is philologically impossible, j
while the supposed instances of an Assyrian god Ya are all due to misin- |
terpretation of the texts, and the name of the Edomite king A-ramrnu j
does not prove that the Edomite deity A was identical with the Baby
lonian. Oppert's proposal to identify A with Malik or Moloch finds
no support in the monuments.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 179

by the absence of gender in Accadian, to which I have
already alluded. Where there were no external signs
of gender, and where Mn-Gan, one of the epithets
applied to A, might mean indifferently "lord of light"
or "lady of light," it was not difficult to bring it about.

One of the deities partially absorbed by the Sun- god
was the ancient god of Fire. Among most primitive
peoples, fire is endowed with divine attributes. It moves
and devours like a living thing ; it purifies and burns up
all that is foul ; and it is through the fire upon the altar
— the representative of the fire upon the hearth — that
the savour of the burnt sacrifice ascends to the gods in
heaven. But fire is itself a messenger from above. It
comes to us from the sky in the lightning-flash, and we
feel it in the rays of the noontide sun. The Fire- god
tended therefore to become on the one side the messenger
and intermediary between gods and men, and on the
other side the Sun-god himself.

In pre-Semitic times, however, the Fire-god retained
all his primaeval privileges and rank. He is still one of
the leading gods or "creators" of the pantheon. It is
he who controls the lower spirits of earth and heaven,
and to whom the prayers of the faithful are addressed.
Thus he is celebrated in an old hymn in the following
strains :l

1. " The (bed) of the earth they took for their border,2 but the god

appeared not,

2. from the foundations of the earth he appeared not to make

hostility ;

1 W.A.I, iv. 15.

2 In the Semitic rendering, " (In the bed) of the earth their necks
were taken."

N 2

180 LECTURE III.

3. (to) the heaven below they extended (their path), and to the

heaven that is unseen they climbed afar.1

4. In the Star(s) of Heaven was not their ministry ;2 in Mazzaroth

(the Zodiacal signs)3 was their office.

5. The Fire-god, the first-born supreme, unto heaven they pursued

and no father did he know.

6. 0 Fire-god, supreme on high, the first-born, the mighty, supreme

enjoiner of the commands of Anu !

7. The Fire-god enthrones with himself the friend that he loves.

8. He reveals the enmity of those seven.

9. On the work he ponders in his dwelling-place.

10. 0 Fire-god, how were those seven begotten, how were they

nurtured ?

11. Those seven in the mountain of the sunset were born;

12. those seven in the mountain of the sunrise grew up.

13. In the hollows of the earth they have their dwelling;

14. on the high-places of the earth their names are proclaimed.

15. As for them, in heaven and earth they have no dwelling, hid

den is their name.

16. Among the sentient gods they are not known.

17. Their name in heaven and earth exists not.

1 8. Those seven from the mountain of the sunset gallop forth ;

19. those seven in the mountain of the sunrise are bound to rest.

20. In the hollows of the earth they set the foot.

21. On the high-places of the earth they lift the neck.

22. They by nought are known ; in heaven and earth is no know

ledge of them."

Fire was produced in Babylonia, as in other countries
of the ancient world, by rubbing two sticks one against
the other. The fire-stick, therefore, whose point was
ignited by the friction, was regarded with special vene-
tion. The idea of "fire " was expressed by two ideographs
(GIS-BAE and GIS-SIR) which signified literally " the wood

1 So the Semitic rendering. The original has, " the heaven which
has no exit they opened."

2 Iphtael of idu, " to know."

3 In the original : " the watch of the thirty."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 181

of light." This " wood of light" was exalted into a god.
Sometimes it represents Gibil or Kibir, the fire-god, some
times it is itself worshipped as a divinity under the name
of 'Savul (in Semitic, 'Savullu). 'Savul seems to have
been adored more particularly in Babylon ; at all events
he was identified with Merodach as well as with Samas
in those later ages when the cult of the Accadian fire-
god passed into the cult of the Semitic Sun-god, and his
name forms part of that of the Babylonian king 'Savul-
sarra-yukin or Saosdukhinos, the brother of Assur-bani-
pal. It even made its way into the far west. The names
of the kings of Edom preserved in the 36th chapter
of Genesis throw a curious light on Edomite mythology,
and show that 'Savul of Babylon was worshipped among
the mountains of Seir. We are told that Hadad the son
of Bedad, Samlah of Masrekah or the " Vine-land," and
Saul of Eehoboth by the river Euphrates, succeeded one
another. Now Hadad, as we shall see, was the Sun-
god of the Syrians, whom the Assyrians identified with
their own Eamman or Eimmon; and the name of his
father Bedad is simply Ben-Dad, athe son of Dad,"
another form of Hadad according to the cuneiform inscrip
tions, and possibly the same as the David of the Hebrews,
the Dido, or " beloved one," of the Phoenicians. Samlah
of the " Wine-land" is the Semele of Greek mythology,
the mother of Dionysos the Wine-god. Her Phoenician
origin has long been recognised, and her name has
recently been met with in a masculine form in a Phoe
nician inscription. Saul of Eehoboth by the river
Euphrates is, letter for letter, identical with the Babylo
nian 'Savul, and his Babylonian origin is further betrayed
by the statement that he came from the Euphrates,

182 LECTURE III.

Eehoboth means merely the "public places" of a city ;
and when we remember that in the 10th chapter of
Genesis (v. 11), Eehoboth ('Ir) is the name applied to
the suburbs of Nineveh, it seems probable that in the
Eehoboth of the Euphrates we may discover the suburbs
of its sister-city Babylon.

Let us now turn back again to Sippara, the city whose
Sun-god swallowed up so many of the primeval deities
of Accad, like the Kroiios of Hellenic myth. Ey the side
of Sippara of Samas, I have said, arose the twin-city of
Sippara of Anunit. The final dental shows that Anunit
was a female divinity, and shows furthermore that she
was of Semitic origin. Eut it was only as a female
divinity that she came from a Semitic source. She was,
in fact, the Semitic feminine of Anuna, one of the pri
mordial gods of ancient Accad. Amina, it would appear,
must have been adored in Sippara in pre-Semitic days,
and subsequently worshipped for a time by the Semites,
who created out of his name his female consort Anunit.
Anunit was identified with Istar, and thus survived,
while her lord and master, to whom she owed her very
existence, passed into almost entire oblivion. For this
it is possible to assign a reason. Anuna signifies " the
master," and is the masculine correlative of Innina or
Inina, the "mistress" of the ghost- world, to whom I
have had occasion to refer before.1 Like Inina, he pre
sided over the lower world, and was consequently the
local god of primitive Sippara, who corresponded to the
Mul-lil of Mpur. Eut the name was also a general one,

1 As Innina stands for an nina, the vowel of an, " divine one," being
assimilated to that of Nina, Anuna stands for an nunat " the great god."

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 183

and might be applied to any of the deities whom the
Accadians regarded as specially endowed with power.
Hence it is that in a bilingual hymn the Anunas of the
lower world are called "the great gods;"1 while another
text declares that while "the great gods are fifty in
number, the gods of destiny are seven and the Aniina
of heaven are five."2 Besides the five Anunas of the
heaven, there were the more famous Anunas of the lower
world, whose golden throne was placed in Hades by the
side of the waters of life. They were called the Anii-
na-ge, " the masters of the under- world," a term which
the Semites pronounced Aminaki. These Aminaki were
opposed to the Igigi or angels, the spirits of the upper
air, and, the real origin of their name being forgotten, took
the place of the older Anunas. In one of the texts I
have quoted, the Semitic translator not only renders the
simple Anunas by " Aniinaki," he even speaks of the
" Aminaki of heaven," which is a contradiction in terms.3

1 W. A. I. ii. 19, 8. " The Aminas of the lower world to the upper
firmament return." The hymn must be of Semitic origin, as the Acca-
dian version shows Semitic influence. Another hymn (ii. 19. 49, 50)
declares that " the Anunas of the lower world in the hollows I cause to
grope like swine." In a hymn in which the Fire-god is identified with
Samas, the latter is called "the judge of the Anunnaki" (K2585,
060. 9).

2 K4629, Rev.

3 Upon the analogy of Aminaki, the Semites have added a final gut
tural to several of the words they borrowed from the Accadians, like
asun'aku, "a bed," from the Ace. asurra. Similarly the analogy of
issakku, " a high-priest," from the Semitic root nasaku, " to pour out
libations," has called into existence other nouns with final -akku. The
Accadian abrik, "a vizier," borrowed by the Semites under the form of
abrikku (82. 8—16. Obv. 18), whence the abhrek of Gen. xli. 43 helped
in the same direction. The adverbs in -ku of Zimmern (Babylonisclie
Busspsdlmen, p. 94), like martsaku or zazaku, should be read martsatus
and zazatus.

184 LECTURE III.

Though Anunit was considered merely a local form
of Istar (W. A. I. ii. 49, 12), the great temple of Ulbar1
— if that is the right pronunciation of the word — which
had been erected by Zabu about B.C. 2340, preserved
her special name and cult at Sippara, from whence it
passed into Assyria. ]STabonidos tells us that he restored
the temple " for Anunit, the mistress of battle, the bearer
of the bow and quiver, the accomplisher of the command
of Eel her father, the sweeper away of the enemy, the
destroyer of the wicked, who marches before the gods, who
has made (his) omens favourable at sunrise and sunset."
In calling her the lady of battle and daughter of Bel,
Nabonidos identifies her with Istar, an identification
which is made even more plain a few lines further on
(col. iii. 42, 48 — 51), where he makes her the sister of
Samas and daughter of Sin.

This identity of Anunit and Istar brings Sippara into
close connection with Erech, the modern Warka, the city
specially consecrated to the goddess of love. Erech, we
are told in the story of the plague-demon Nerra,2 was
" the seat of Anu and Istar, the city of the choirs of the
festival- girls and consecrated maidens of Istar,"3 where
in E-Ana, " the house of heaven," dwelt her priests, "the
festival-makers who had devoted their manhood in order

1 The word is found in R2. i. 10, (b)ennd UL-BAR-MES AN u KI itWiuzu,
" the lights (?) of heaven and earth kept the bond." According to
W. A. I. ii. 61, 11, the temple of Ulbar was in Agadhe or Accad, thus
identifying Accad with Sippara of Anunit, and suggesting that the first
foundations of the temple went back to the time of Sargon, the father
of Naram-Sin.

2 Col. ii. 4 sq.

3 Kitsriti samkhdtu u Jcharimdtu sa Istar. For samkhdtu
comp. Lev. xxiii. 40, Deut, xii. 18,

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 185

that men might adore the goddess, carrying swords,
carrying razors, stout dresses and flint-knives,"1 "who
minister to cause reverence for the glory of Istar." 2 Erech,
too, was the city with whose fortunes the legend of
Gisdhubar was associated ; it was here that he slew the
bull Anu had created to avenge the slight offered by
him to Istar ] and it was here in Uruk suburi, "in Erech
the shepherd's hut," that he exercised his sovereignty.
Erech is thus connected with the great epic of the Semitic
Babylonians, and it is probable that its author, Sin-liqi-
unnmi, was a native of the place. However this may be,
Erech appears to have been one of the centres of Semitic
influence in Babylonia from a very early period. The
names of the kings stamped upon its oldest bricks bear
Semitic names, and the extent to which the worship of
Istar as developed at Erech spread through the Semitic
world points to its antiquity as a Semitic settlement.

It was not of Semitic foundation, however. Its earliest
name was the Accadian Unu-ki or Unuk, "the place of
the settlement," of which the collateral form Uruk does
not seem to have come into vogue before the Semitic
period. If I am right in identifying Unuk with the
Enoch of Genesis, the city built by Kain in commemora
tion of his first-born son, Unuk must be regarded as
having received its earliest culture from Eridu, since
Enoch was the son of Jared, according to Gen. v. 18, and
Jared or Irad (Gen. iv. 18) is the same word as Eridu.3

1 Nas padhri nas nagldbi dupie u tsurri.

2 Sa ana suplukli kaptat D. P. Istar itakkcdu.

3 Zeitschrift fur Keilschriftforschung, ii. 4, p. 404, where I further
suggest that the name represented by the two varying forms of Methu-
selakh and Methusael should be Mutu-sa-ilati, "the husband of the

186 LECTURE III.

The local god of Erech, however, was not Ea, the god
of the river and sea, but Ana, the sky. Thus whereas
at Eridu the present creation was believed to have origi
nated out of water, the sky being the primeval goddess
Zikum or Zigara, mother alike of Ea and the other gods,
at Erech the sky was itself the god and the creator of the
visible universe. The two cosmologies are antagonistic
to one another, and produced manifold inconsistencies in
the later syncretic age of Babylonian religion.

But it was not in Erech alone that the sky was con
sidered divine. Throughout Chaldeea, Ana, "the sky,"

goddess," i.e. the Sun-god Tammuz, the husband of Istar. He had a
shrine in the forest of Eridu, while Istar was the presiding deity of
Erech. Lamech would be the Semitic equivalent of Lamga, a name of
the Moon-god, according to ii. 47, 66, when represented by the character
which had the pronunciation of nagar, nangaru, in Semitic (3. 572).
Naga-r is probably a dialectic form of Lamga. In S769. 1, 2, the ideo
graph preceded by AB, "lord" is rendered in the Semitic line by gurgurru.
Cp. " Nin-nagar, the great workman (nagar} of heaven," W. A. I. iv.
25, 27. Adah and Zillah, the wives of Lamech, would correspond with
the Assyrian edu and tsillu, " darkness" and " shade." Jabal and Jubal,
the sons of Lamech, are merely variant forms of the same word, which
is evidently the Assyrian ablu, "son" (from dbalu, "to bring down"),
like Abel (as Dr. Oppert long since pointed out). Ablu refers us to
"the only son" Tammuz (W. A. I. ii. 36, 54), who was "a shepherd"
like Jabal and Abel, and whose untimely death was commemorated by
the musical instruments of Jubal. In Kypros, in fact, he was known as
the son of Kinyras, a name that reminds us of the kinnor, or "harp."
Adonis-Tammuz, it was said, was slain by Ares in the form of a boar,
and Ares was identified with the Babylonian god Adar or Uras (see
above, p. 152), "the god of the pig," whose name (AN-BAR) was used ideo-
graphically to denote "iron," in curious parallelism to the fact that
Tubal-Cain, the son of Lamech, was the " instructor of every artificer
in brass and iron." There are some who would aver that the Tubal-
Cain of Genesis is but the double of Cain, and that it was he and not
his father Lamech who had slain the "young man" (yeled, Assyrian
ilattu, a title of Tammuz). Adar, it may be noticed, was " the lord of
the date," and therefore of agriculture (see above, p. 153).

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 187

received worship, and the oldest magical texts invoke
"the spirit of the sky" by the side of that of the earth.
"What distinguished the worship of Ana at Erech was
that here alone he was the chief deity of the local cult,
that here alone he had ceased to be a subordinate spirit,
and had become a dingir or " creator."1

Of this pre-Semitic period in the worship of Ana we
know but little. It is only when he has become the Aim
of the Semites and has undergone considerable changes
in his character and worship, that we make our first true
acquaintance with him. We come to know him as the
Semitic Baal-samaim, or " lord of heaven," the supreme
Baal, viewed no longer as the Sun-god, but as the whole
expanse of heaven which is illuminated by the sun.2

How early this must have been is shown by the exten
sion of his name as far west as Palestine. In the records
of the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes III., in the 16th cen
tury before our era, mention is made of the Palestinian
town of Beth-Anath, "the temple of Anat," the female
double of Ami. Another Beth-Anath was included
within the borders of the tribe of Naphtali (Josh. xix.

1 We must not forget that in many passages in the Proto-Chaldsean
literature ana denotes simply " the sky," and not a divine being at all,
though the Semitic translators, misled by the determinative of divinity
with which the word is written, have usually supposed it to represent
the god Anu.

2 Compare the Phrenician account of the creation as reported by
Philo Byblius : " Of the wind Kolpia and of his wife Baau (i.e. Baku,
lo/m), which is interpreted night, were begotten two mortal men, Aion
and Protogonos so called, and Aion discovered food from trees. Those
begotten from these were called Genos and Genea (1 Kain), and inha
bited Phoenicia, and when great droughts came they stretched forth
their hands to heaven, towards the sun, for this they supposed to be
the only god, the lord of heaven, calling him Eeel-samin."

188

LECTURE III.

38); and Anathoth, whose name shows us that, besides the
Ashtaroth or "Astartes," the Canaanites venerated their
local goddesses under the title of "Anats," was a city of
the priests. Anah or Anat was the daughter of the Hivite
Zibeon and mother-in-law of Esau (Gen. xxxvi. 1, 14),
and by her side we hear of Anah or Anu, the son of the
Horite Zibeon, who " found the mules (or hot-springs) in
the wilderness as he fed the asses of Zibeon his father."
But Anu did not make his way westward alone. In the
Assyrian inscriptions Anu is coupled with Dagan, "the
exalted one,"1 whose female consort seems to have been
Dalas or Salas. Thus Assur-natsir-pal calls himself "the
beloved of Anu and Dagon ;" and Sargon asserts that he
"had extended his protection over the city of Harran,
and, according to the ordinance of Anu and Dagon, had
written down their laws." Here Dagan or Dagon is
associated with Harran, the half-way house, as it were,
between the Semites of Babylonia and the Semites of the
west. From Harran we can trace his name and cult to
Pho3nicia. Beth- Dagon was a city of Asher, in the neigh
bourhood of Tyre and Zidon (Josh. xix. 27), and the
fragments of Philon Byblios, the Greek translator of the
Phoenician writer Sankhuniathon, tell us expressly that
Dagon was a Phoenician god. That the statement is
genuine is made clear by the false etymology assigned to
the name, from the Semitic dag an, " corn."2 But it was

1 W. A. I. iv. 20, 16 ; 79. 7-8. 68. The Accadian da means "sum
mit" (W. A. I. v. 21. 45. 6; ii. 26, 49), and gan is the participle of
the substantive verb. In W. A. I. iii. 68, 21, Dagon is identified with
Mul-lil. For his wife Dalas or Salas, see W. A. I. iii. 68, 22.

2 "Ouranos, succeeding to the kingdom of his father, contracted
marriage with his sister Ge, and had by her four sons, Ilos (El), who

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 189

among the Philistines in the extreme south of Palestine
that the worship of Dagon attained its chief importance.
Here he appears to have been exalted into a Baal, and
to have become the supreme deity of the confederate
Philistine towns. We hear of his temples at Gaza
(Josh. xvi. 21 — 30) and at Ashdod (1 Sam. v. 1 sg.\ as
well as of a town of Beth-Dagon, and we gather from
the account given of his image that he was represented
as a man with head and hands.

It is probable that the worship of Anu migrated west
ward along with the worship of Istar. The god and
goddess of Erech could not well be dissociated from one
another, and the spread of the worship of the goddess
among the Semitic tribes brought with it the spread of
the worship of the god also. I am inclined to think
that this must be placed at least as early as the age of
Sargon of Accad. The worship of Istar found its way to
all the branches of the Semitic family except the Arabic ;
and, as we shall see in a future Lecture, the form of the
name Ashtoreth, given to the goddess in Canaan, raises
a presumption that this was due, not to the campaigns
of the early Babylonian kings, but to the still earlier
migrations of the Semitic population towards the west.
The old sky-god of the Accadians must have become the
Semitic Anu at a very remote period indeed.

But it was the sky-god of Erech only. It does not
follow that where the divine Ana, or " sky," is mentioned

is called Kronos, and Betylos (Bethel), and Dagon, which signifies
corn, and Atlas .... Kronos gave (a concubine of Ouranos) in marriage
to Dagon, and she was delivered and called the child Demaroon ....
And Dagon, after he had found out bread-corn and the plough, was
called Zeus Arotrios."

190 LECTURE HI.

in the Accadian texts, the god who became the Semitic
Ami is referred to, even though the Semitic translators
of the texts imagined that such was the case. There
were numerous temples in Chaldgea into whose names the
name of the deified sky entered, but in most cases this
deified sky was not the sky-god of Erech. It is only
where the names have been given in Semitic times, or
where the Accadian texts are the production of Semitic
literati composing in the sacred language of the priests,
like the monks of the Middle Ages, that we may see the
Anu of the mythological tablets. "Without doubt the
Semitic scribes have often confounded their Anu with
the local sky-god of the ancient documents, but this
should only make us the more cautious in dealing with
their work.

The original sky-god of Erech denoted the visible sky.
He is opposed to the visible earth, and was consequently
in most of the Chaldoean cities an inferior deity, subor
dinate to a Mul-lil, an Ea or a Sun-god, who ruled over
the sky and the earth. But when the Accadian Ana
became the Semitic Anu, he assumed a more spiritual
character. It was no longer the visible heaven that was
represented by him, but an invisible one, above and
beyond the heaven that we behold. Henceforward " the
heaven of Anu" denoted the serene and changeless regions
to which the gods fled when the deluge had broken up
the face of the lower heaven, and which an Assyrian poot
calls "the land of the silver sky." It was to this spiri
tualised heaven that the spirit of Ea-bani, the friend of
Gisdhubar, ascended, and from which he gazed placidly
on the turmoil of the earth below ; and it was from his
seat therein that Anu assigned their places in the louver

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 191

heaven to Samas, Sin and Istar, the Sun, the Moon and
the Evening Star, according to the legend of the seven
wicked spirits.

But the spiritualisation of Anu did not stop here. As
a Semitic Baal he had become a supreme god, the lord
and father of the universe. It was only a step further,
therefore, to make him himself the universe, and to resolve
into him the other deities of the Babylonian pantheon.
We read occasionally in the hymns of "the one god."
"The ban, the ban," a poet writes, personifying the
priestly sentence of excommunication, like the Ara of
JEskhylos or the divine burden of Zechariah (ix. 1), "is
a barrier which none may overpass j1 the barrier of the
gods against which they cannot transgress, the barrier of
heaven and earth which cannot be changed ; the one god
against whom none may rebel; god and man cannot
explain (it) ; it is a snare not to be passed which is
formed against the evil, the cord of a snare from which
there is no exit which is turned against the evil." The
conception of Anu, however, as "the one god" was
pantheistic rather than monotheistic. The cosmological
deities of an older phase of faith were in the first instance
resolved into him. In place of the genealogical, or gnostic,
system which we find in the account of the Creation in
days, we have a pantheistic system, in which Lakhama
and the other primaeval forces of nature are not the
parents of Anu, but are identified with Anu himself.2 It
is easy to conceive how the old deity An-sar, " the upper
firmament," with all its host of spirits, might be iden-

1 W.A.I. iv. 16, 1.

2 W.A.I, ii. 54, 40, "Lakhma is Anu, the god of the hosts ol
heaven and earth." So in ii. 54, 34, &c., and iii. G9? 1.

192 LECTURE III.

tified with him ; but when we find Uras also, the Sun-god
of Nipur, made one with Ann, "the hearer of prayer,"
and the eagle-like Alala, the bridegroom of Istar and
double of Tammuz, equally resolved into the god of
Erech, it is plain that we have to do with an advanced
stage of pantheism. This monotheistic, or rather pan
theistic, school of faith has been supposed by Sir Henry
Eawlinson to have grown up at Eridu ; but the fact that
it centres round the name of Anu points rather to Erech
as its birth-place. How long it flourished, or whether it
extended beyond a narrow group of priestly thinkers, we
have no means of ascertaining. It is interesting, how
ever, as showing that the same tendency which in Assyria
exalted Assur to the position of an all-powerful deity
who would brook neither opposition nor unbelief, among
the more meditative Babylonians produced a crude system
of pantheism. Whatever question there may be as to
whether the pure and unmixed Semite is capable of ori
ginating a pantheistic form of faith, there can be little
doubt about it where the Semite is brought into close
contact with an alien race. The difference between the
Assyrian and the Babylonian was the difference between
the purer Semite and one in whose veins ran a copious
stream of foreign blood.

The early importance and supremacy of Erech in
Semitic Babylonia caused its god to assume a place by
the side of Ea of Eridu and Mul-lil, the older Bel. It
is possible that the extension of his cult had already
begun in Accadian days. The Ana, or Sky-god, to whom
Gudea at Tel-loh erected a temple, may have been the
Sky-god of Erech, more especially when we remember
the connection that existed between Erech and Eridu on

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 193

the one hand, and between Tel-loh and Eridu on the
other.1 However this may be, from the commencement
of the Semitic period Ami appears as the first member
of a triad which consisted of Anu, Bel or Mul-lil, and Ea.
His position in the triad was due to the leading position
held by Erech; the gods of ISTipur and Eridu retained
the rank which their time-honoured sanctity and the
general extension of their cult had long secured to them \
but the rank of Anu was derived from the city of which
he was the presiding god. The origin of the triad was
thus purely accidental ; there was nothing in the religious
conceptions of the Babylonians which led to its formation.
Once formed, however, it was inevitable that a cosmolo-
gical colouring should be given to it, and that Anu, Bel
and Ea, should represent respectively the heaven, the
lower world and the watery element. Later ages likened
this cosmological trinity to the elemental trinity of the
Sun, the Moon and the Evening Star ; and below the triad
of Anu, Bel and Ea, was accordingly placed the triad of
of Samas, Sin and Istar. But this secondary trinity
never attracted the Babylonian mind. Up to the last,
as we have seen, Sin continued to be the father of Samas
and Istar, and Babylonian religion remained true to its
primitive tendency to dualism, its separation of the divine
world into male and female deities. The only genuine
trinity that can be discovered in the religious faith of
early Chalda3a was that old Accadian system which con
ceived of a divine father and mother by the side of their
son the Sun-god.

1 The importation of the worship of Istar into Tel-loh, with her
temple of E-ana, or " house of heaven," would, however, fully account
for the importation of the worship of Anu at the same time.

0

194 LECTURE III.

The Semitic Ami necessarily produced the feminine
Anat, and as necessarily Anat was identified with the
earth as Ami was with the sky. In this way the Acca-
dian idea of a marriage union between the earth and the
sky was adapted to the newer Semitic beliefs. But we
must not misunderstand the nature of the adaptation.
Anat never became an independent deity, as Dav-kina,
for example, had been from the outset; she had no
separate existence apart from Anu. She is simply a
Bilat matati, " a mistress of the world," or &Bilat Hi, " a
mistress of the gods," like the wife of Bel or of Samas;
she is, in fact, a mere colourless representation of the
female principle in the universe, with no attributes that
distinguish her from Anunit or Istar except the single
one that she was the feminine form of Anu. Hence
it is that the Canaanites had not only their Ashtaroth,
but their Anathoth as well, for the Anathoth or " Anats"
differed from the Ashtaroth or "Ashtoreths" in little
else than name. So far as she was an active power, Anat
was the same as Istar; in all other respects she was
merely the grammatical complement of Anu, the goddess
who necessarily stood at the side of a particular god.

There are still two other gods of whom I must speak
before I conclude this Lecture — Nergal, the god of Cutha,
and Eamman or Eimmon, the air-god. Nergal occupies
a peculiar position. He was the local deity of the town
called Gudua, "the resting-place," by the Accadians — a
name changed by the Semites into Kutu or Cutha — which
is now represented by the mounds of Tel- Ibrahim. For
reasons unknown to us, the necropolis of Cutha became
famous at an early time; and though the Babylonian
kings, like the kings of Assyria and Judah, were buried

TTIE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 195

in their own palaces,1 it is probable that many of their
subjects preferred a sepulchre in the neighbourhood of
Cutha.

The original name of the god of Gudua was Nerra or
Uer, a word which the Semitic scribes render by gasru,
"the strong one," and less accurately namru, " the bright
one."2 Later legends had much to say about this ancient
hero-god. Like Etdna, his throne was placed in Hades,
where he sat crowned, awaiting the entrance of the dead
kings of the earth. But the hero-king of the myths was
one and the same with the god whom his primitive wor
shippers at Gudua made king of ardli or Hades. He
was, in fact, the personification of death. Hence his
title of "the strong one," the invincible god who over
powers the mightiest of mortal things. The realm over
which he ruled was "the great city" (uru-gaT)\ great,
indeed, it must have been, for it contained all the multi
tudes of men who had passed away from the earth.

Like the city over which he ruled, the god, too, was
himself " great." He came, therefore, to be familiarly
known as Nergal — Mrwal in the dialect of Accad — "the
great Ner," or "hero." A punning etymology connected
his name with "the great city" (uru-gal\ as if it had
been Ne(r)-uru-gal, "the ]N"er of Hades." But he was
also "king of Cutha," as well as of "the desert" on

1 See the dynastic fragment published by George Smith in the
Trans. Sac. Bib. Arch. iii. 2, lines 27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 37.

2 W.A. I. iv. 9, 36. Ner is rendered namru in K4245, Rev. 13
(where "the god of the high voice" is said to be ner). A play seems
to be intended on gir (ngir), " the lightning-flash," which was nnmru
in Assyrian, rendered by ner in W.A.I, iv. 5, 15. Numru in the
Accado-Semitic of northern Babylonia was written in rebus fashion
NUM-GIR, i.e. num-mir. Nerra was pronounced Ngirra ; hence the gloss
lira.

o2

196 LECTURE III.

whose borders Cutlia stood and where its necropolis was
probably situated; while other titles made him "king of
heaven," "the king who marches before Ann," "the
king Nerra," and "the mighty sovereign of the deep."1
At Cutha he had been known in pre-Semitic days as
Aria, "the founder," and his worshippers had called him
Allamu and Almu, the god " who issues forth in might."2
But his most frequent appellation is U-gur, the god of
" the falchion,"3 and under this name he tended to become
separate from Nergal, the god of the tomb, and to be
regarded as, like the Sun-god Adar, the champion of the
gods.

It was as the death-dealing lord of Hades that Nergal
first became "the hero of the gods," "who marches in
their front." The metaphor was taken from the champion
who, like Goliath, places himself before his comrades and

1 W. A. I. ii. 54, 5. The title "king of heaven" must go back to
days when the sky-god of Erech was as yet unknown at Cutha, while
the title "great king of the deep" indicates a connection with Eridu.
In Phoenicia, we are told, he was known as Sar-rabu, " the great king,"
and among the Shuites on the western bank of the Euphrates as Emu.
Emu is letter for letter the national god of the Ammonites, Ammi,
which, as Dr. Neubauer has shown, appears as 'Am in such Hebrew
names as Jerobo-am and Rehobo-am.

2 Allam-ta-ea. Allam maybe connected with alam, "an image,"
which probably has the same root as alad, " a colossus," dial or ala,
"a demon," alala, "the Sun-god," who was afterwards identified with
Anu, and alim, " a steer," literally " the strong animal." But the word
also seems to have been read 'Sulim (see W. A. I. ii. 61. 72, 73).

8 W. A. I. ii. 2, 342. As Ugur, the god was also worshipped as
"Nergal of the Tchddhi" or "apparitions" (W.A.I, iii. 67, 70). In
later times the name may have been divided into U-gur, "lord of the '•
gur" which would then have been confounded with gur, " the deep"
(in Sumerian), one of the titles of Ea being En-gur, "lord of the deep"
(W. A. I. ii. 58, 53).

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 197

challenges the enemy to combat. It is thus that we read
in the story of the Deluge, when the flood of rain and
destruction is described as coming upon the guilty world :
" Eimmon in the midst of (heaven) thundered, and ]N"ebo
and the Wind-god went in front ; the throne-bearers went
over mountain and plain; Nergal the mighty removes
the wicked ; Adar goes in front and casteth down." l

As lord of Hades, too, he was made the son of Mul-lil.
A hymn (K 5268), the colophon of which tells us that it
was composed in Cutha, begins with the words : " Let
tergal be glorified, the hero of the gods, who cometh
forth as the strong one, the son of Mul-lil." In the same
hymn, Marad is declared to be his city, from which we
may infer that Marad was near Cutha. Its protecting
divinity, however, was, strictly speaking, Lugal-tuda, "the
royal offspring," or perhaps " valiant king," a personi
fication of the thunder -cloud and lightning; but it is
evident from the hymn that he had been identified with
the death-dealing god of Cutha. Of Laz, the wife of
Nergal, we know little or nothing. Her name survived
as the local divinity of Cutha, but her office and attri
butes were taken by Allat. Even Nergal himself as
the lord of Hades belongs rather to the Accadian than
to the Semitic period. Among the Semites he was the
hero and champion of the gods, and as such the destroyer
of the wicked, rather than the king of death who slays
alike the wicked and the good. The sovereignty of
Hades had passed out of his hands, and he had become

1 It was in this capacity also that he appears as Nerra, the plague-
demon (misread Lubara by George Smith), whose adventures formed
the subject of a long poem.

198 LECTURE III.

the companion of the solar Adar and the warrior of the
gods of heaven.

Under his old name of Ner, however, a curious remi
niscence of his primitive character lasted down to late
times. In the hymns and other poetical effusions, we
not unfrequently come across the phrase, " mankind, the
cattle of the god !Ner." I have already drawn attention
to the agricultural nature of early Chaldsean civilisation,
and the influence that agriculture had upon the modes
of thought and expression of the population. Not only
was the sky regarded as the counterpart of the Baby
lonian plain, and the heavenly bodies transformed into
the herds and flocks that fed there, but the human
inhabitants of the earth were themselves likened to the
cattle they pastured and fed. One of the earliest titles
of the Babylonian kings was " shepherd," reminding us
of the Homeric TTOL^V Aaw^ " shepherd of nations;" and
in the Epic of Gisdhubar the sovereign city of Erech is
termed the subur, or " shepherd's hut." Just as the
subjects of the king, therefore, were looked upon as the
sheep whom their ruler shepherded, so too mankind in
general were regarded as the cattle slain by the god of
death. They were, in fact, his herd, whom he fed and
slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods.1

But apart from phrases of this kind, which embalmed
the beliefs and ideas of a half -forgotten age, Nergal of
Cutha was a decaying godhead. His power waned with

1 So in a fragmentary hymn composed by order of Assur-bani-pal on
the occasion of an eclipse of the moon, mankind are called " the people
of the black heads, the living assembly (pukliar napisti\ the cattle
(pul) of the god Ner, the reptiles (nammasse) [whom] thy [governance]
has overlooked" (K 2836, Obv. 11—13).

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 199

the rise and growth of Semitic influence in Babylonia.
He thus formed a strong contrast to the god of the air
and wind, whose cult belongs essentially to the Semitic
period.

The primitive inhabitant of Babylonia paid a special
worship to the winds. He beheld in them spirits of good
and evil. He prayed for "the good wind" which cooled
the heats of summer and brought moisture to the parched
earth, and he saw in the storm and tempest, in the freez
ing blasts of winter and the hot wind that blew from the
burning desert, "the seven evil spirits." They were the
demons "who had been created in the lower part of
heaven," and who warred against the Moon-god when
he suffered eclipse. They were likened to all that was
most noxious to man. The first, we are told, was " the
sword (or lightning) of rain ;" the second, " a vampire j"1
the third, "a leopard;" the fourth, "a serpent;" the
fifth, "a watch-dog" (?); the sixth, "a violent tempest
which (blows) against god and king ;" and the seventh,
"a baleful wind." But their power caused them to be
dreaded, and they were venerated accordingly. It was
remembered that they were not essentially evil. They,
too, had been the creation of Anu, for they came forth
from the sky, and all seven were " the messengers of Anu
their king." In the war of the gods against the dragon
of chaos, they had been the allies of Merodach. "We
read of them that ere the great combat began, the god

1 Usumgdlu, expressed by ideographs that signify "the solitary
monster." It denoted a fabulous beast which " devoured the corpses
of the dead" (W. A. I. ii. 19, 62), and was therefore not exactly a vam
pire, which devoured the living, but corresponded rather to one of the
creatures mentioned iu Is. xiii. 21, 22, xxxiv. 14.

200 LECTURE III.

" created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the tempest,
the storm, the four winds, the seven winds, the whirl
wind, the unceasing wind." "When Merodach had slung
forth his boomerang1 and hit the dragon, " the evil wind
that seizes behind showed its face. And Tiamat (the
dragon of the sea) opened her mouth to swallow it, but
(the god) made the evil wind descend so that she could
not close her lips ; with the force of the winds he filled
her stomach, and her heart was sickened and her mouth
distorted." Down to the closing days of the Assyrian
empire, the four winds, "the gods of Nipur," were still
worshipped in Assyria (W.A.I, iii. 66, Rev. 26), and
Saru, the Wind-god, is mentioned as a separate divinity
in the story of the Deluge.

Among the winds there was one whose name awakened
feelings of dread in the mind of every Babylonian. This
was the tempest, called mdtu in Accadian,2 and dbub in
Semitic. It was the tempest which had been once sent
by Bel to drown guilty mankind in the waters of a deluge,
and whose return as the minister of divine vengeance
was therefore ever feared. As each year brought with it
the month of Sebat or January, with its " curse of rain,"
the memory of that terrible event rose again in the Baby-

1 The word means literally " the cord of a snare." Zimmern there
fore thinks of "net," but the sculptures show that a boomerang is
meant.

2 The word is written with the determinative of water A. It is pro
bably a contraction of Martu, since in the name of the god who after
wards came to correspond to the Semitic Ramman, the first syllable is
represented by the character which usually has the value of mar. But
we know from another character which has the same value that the
same word could assume in different dialects or periods of Accadian the
varying forms of mat, mar and md.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 201

Ionian mind. Matu was a god whose favour had to be
conciliated, and whose name accordingly appears on
numbers of early cylinders.

But though Matu was thus specially identified with
the great tempest which formed an era in Babylonian
history, it was not forgotten that he was but one of several
storm-gods, who were therefore spoken of as " the gods
Matu."1 Like the clouds, they were children of the sea,
and were thus included in the family of Ea. It is possible
that this genealogy was due to the systematising labours
of a later day; but it is also possible that the gods Matu
were primarily adored in Eridu, and that Eridu, and not
Surippak, was the original city of the Chaldsean Noah.
It is at least noticeable that the immortal home of the
translated Xisuthros was beyond the mouth of the Eu
phrates, near which Eridu was built.

If Eridu were the birth-place of Matu, it would explain
why the god of the tempest was also the god of the
western wind. Elsewhere in Babylonia, the western
wind blew from across the desert and brought heat with
it rather than rain. But in those remote days, when the
northern portion of the Persian Gulf had not as yet been
filled up with miles of alluvial deposit, a westerly breeze
could still come to Eridu across the water. In a peni
tential psalm,2 Matu, "the lord of the mountain" (mulu
mursamma-Ul)j whose wife, " the lady of the mountain,"
is mentioned on the monuments of Tel-loh, is invoked
along with his consort Gubarra, Ea, " the sovereign of
heaven and earth and sovereign of Eridu," Dav-kina,
Merodach, Zarpanit, Nebo and Nana—in short, along

i W. A. I. ii. 56. 41, 42. 2 W. A. I. iv. 21, 2,

202 LECTURE III.

with the gods of Eridu and the kindred deities of Baby-
ion. It is true that the Matu of this psalm is not the
IVf atu of the west, but of the eastern mountains of Elam ;
we have seen, however, that more than one Matu was
worshipped in primitive days, and it is the cradle and
starting-point of the name which we are now seeking to
discover.

But whether or not Eridu were really the first home
of the cult of a god (or gods) Matu, it was with the
west that he came to be chiefly identified. Titnim, the
old Accadian name of the land of Canaan, became the
land of Matu, which the Semites, who faced the rising
sun in their prayers, rendered by AMarru, " the hinder
country." His worship was carried by Arameean tribes
across the desert to Syria and Damascus. But before
this happened, a change had taken place in the character
of Matu himself. He had ceased to be Accadian and
had been transformed into a Semitic god, absorbing into
himself at the same time the name and attributes of
another deity.

This other deity was the god of the town of Muru, who
represented the air, more especially the atmosphere when
lighted up by the rays of the sun. His Accadian name
was Meri, "the exalted" or " glorious," known also as
Mer-mer, " the very glorious." He represented what the
Semitic Babylonians termed the saruru, or " shining fir
mament." His Accadian name was literally translated
into Semitic as Eamanu, " the exalted one," which later
generations connected with a root signifying "to thunder,"
and so wrote Eammanu (for Eamimanu), "the thun-
derer." The Hebrew Masoretes started yet another false
etymology. They identified the word with rimmon^ "a

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 203

pomegranate," and punctuated it accordingly in the pas
sages in which it occurs in the Old Testament. As,
however, the form Eimmon has thus become familiar to
English ears, while Eamman is of strange sound, it is
best to adhere to the Hebraised form of the god's name,
in spite of its etymological incorrectness. Eimmon, there -
fore, and not Eaman or Eamman, is the form which I
shall employ in these Lectures.1

Now Eimmon, as we learn from the books of Kings,
was the supreme god of the Syrians of Damascus. He
was there identified with the Sun-god Hadad, the all-
powerful Baal of the northern Syrian tribes. As far
south as the plain of Jezreel, according to Zechariah
xii. 11, the worship of Hadad-Eimmon was celebrated,
and Hadad-Eimmon is but a compound form which ex
presses the identity of Eimmon and Hadad. The same
fact is made known to us by the Assyrian inscriptions.
Not only has Mr. Pinches2 brought to light a series of
four documents belonging to the beginning of the reign
of Nabonidos, in which mention is made of a Syrian
named Bin-Addu-natanu or Ben-Hadad-nathan, " the son
of Hadad has given;'7 we find also the names of Aramaean
chieftains written with the ideographs which denote the
Assyrian Eimmon, but pronounced, as variant copies of
the texts inform us, as Dadda or Dadi. Thus we read
of a North- Arabian prince called Bir-Dada, and the Ben-
Hadad of Scripture appears as Dadd-idri, the Biblical

1 The name of Ramman is preserved in the Sosarmos of Ktesias,
•which represents the Samas (Sawas)- Eamman of the monuments, —
a sufficient indication of the way in which the god's name was pro
nounced in Assyria.

2 Guide to the Nimroiid Central Saloon, pp. 92, 93.

204 LECTURE III.

Hadad-ezer, in the records of Shalmaneser II. The name
made its way to the non-Semitic tribes of the Taurus.
A Komagenian sovereign bears the name of Kigiri-Dada,
which appears also under the abbreviated form of Giri-
Dadi; and Dalilu was a Kaskian or Kolkhian king in
the time of Tiglath-Pileser III. ; while Dadi was a ruler
of Khubuskia, to the south-west of Armenia. That Hadad
was adored even in Edom is shown by the names of the
Edomite kings, Hadad the son of Bedad, and Hadad the
adversary of Solomon.

In Bedad, which stands for Ben-Dad, the exact equiva
lent of Ben-Hadad, we meet with the same shortened
form of the name as that which we find in the Assyrian
inscriptions. It is possible, therefore, that it was confused
with another title of the Sun-god in Canaan, Dod or David,
"the beloved one," the feminine correlative of which is
found in the familiar Dido. Dido was the goddess of
Carthage, not unnaturally confounded, by the piety of
later ages, with Elissa, the foundress of the city. Like
Hadad of Edom, David of Israel will thus have borne a
name which the people about him applied to^ their sove
reign god. It may be that those scholars are right who
believe that the real name of the sweet psalmist of Israel
was El-hanan or Baal-hanan ; if so, David will have been
a popular title derived from a popular appellation of the
Deity. He will thus have shared the fate of his son and
successor, whose true name Jedidiah was changed into
Solomon — the name of the old Semitic " god of peace" —
when David sat at rest within the walls of his new
capital, Jerusalem, the city of " peace, '' and had rest from
his enemies on every side.1

1 See above, p. 57.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 205

Hadad, Addu or Dadda, never superseded the native
name of Eamanu (Kamman) in Babylonia and Assyria,
and remained foreign to the last. Eamanu, however, was
sometimes addressed as Barqu or Barak, " the lightning;"
and it is possible that antiquarian zeal may have also
sometimes imposed on him the Accadian title of Meru.
He grew continuously in popular favour. In Semitic
Babylonia, and yet more in Semitic Assyria, his aid was
constantly invoked; and, like Anu, Bel and Ea, he tended
as time went on to become more and more national in
character. Eamman is one of the least local of Baby
lonian gods.

This was due in great measure to the nature of his
origin. He began as the amalgamation of two distinct
deities, the wind-god and the air-god, and the extension
of his cult was marked by the absorption into his person
of the various deities of the winds adored by the older
faith. He continued to grow at their expense. The
spirits of the winds and storms sank lower and lower;
and while the beneficent side of their operation attached
itself to Eamman, there remained to them only that side
which was harmful and demoniac.

The evolution illustrates the way in which the Baby
lonian sought to solve the mystery of evil. The divine
powers he worshipped had once been alike the creators
of good and the creators of evil ; like the powers of nature
which they represented, they had been at once beneficent
and malevolent. By degrees, the two aspects of their
character came to be separated. The higher gods came
to be looked upon as the hearers of prayer and the
bestowers of all good gifts; while the instruments of
their vengeance and the inflictors of suffering and misery

206 LECTUEE III.

upon man were the inferior spirits of the lower sphere.
But the old conception, which derived both good and evil
from the same source, did not wholly pass away. Evil
never came to be regarded as the antagonist of good ; it
was rather the necessary complement and minister of good.
The supreme Baal thus preserved his omnipotence, while
at the same time the ideas of pain and injustice were
dissociated from him. In his combat with the dragon of
chaos, Merodach summons the "evil wind" itself to
his assistance; and in the legend of the assault of the
seven wicked spirits upon the Moon, they are nevertheless
called " the messengers of Anu their king." Nerra, the
god of plague and destruction, smites the people of Baby
lonia on account of their sins by the command of the
gods, like the angel with the drawn sword whom David
saw standing over Jerusalem at the threshing-floor of
Araunah ; and in the story of the Deluge it is because
of the wickedness of mankind that the flood is brought
upon the earth. The powers of darkness are degraded
from their ancient position of independence, and either
driven, like Tiamat, beyond the bounds of the created
world, or reduced to the condition of ministers of divine
wrath.

If we would realise how widely removed is this con
ception of them as the instruments of divine anger from
that earlier view in which they are mere elemental
powers, in themselves neither good nor evil, we cannot
do better than compare these legendary compositions of
the Semitic period with the old Accadian hymns that
relate to the seven harmful spirits. Let us listen to one,
for instance, which probably emanated from Eridu and
applied originally to the "Malu gods:"

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 207

1. " They are the destructive reptiles, even the winds that create

evil !

2. as an evil reptile, as an evil wind, do they appear !

3. as an evil reptile, as an evil wind, who marches in front are

they!

4. Children monstrous (gitmalutu), monstrous sons are they !

5. Messengers of the pest-demon are they !

6. Throne-bearers of the goddess of Hades are they !

7. The whirlwind (mdtu) which is poured upon the land are they !

8. The seven are gods of the wide-spread heaven.

9. The seven are gods of the wide-spread earth.

10. The seven are gods of the (four) zones.

11. The seven are gods seven in number.1

12. Seven evil gods are they !

13. Seven evil demons are they !

14. Seven evil consuming spirits are they '

15. In heaven are they seven, in earth are they seven !"2

Another poet of Eridu, in a hymn to the Fire-god,
speaks of the seven spirits in similar language :

1 The Semitic translator misrenders : " gods of the hosts (of the
firmament)."

2 W. A. I. iv. 1. ii. 65 — iii. 26. The hymn is interrupted by a
magical text, a later portion of it being quoted further on (2. v. 30 — 59)
as follows :

1. " Seven are they, seven are they !

2. In the hollow of the deep, seven are they !

3. (In) the glory of heaven, seven are they !

4. In the hollow of the deep in a palace grew they up ! (In the

original, "from the hollow .... came they forth").

5. Male they are not, female they are not !

6. They are the dust-storm, the travelled ones (?) are they !

7. "Wife they possess not, child is unborn to them.

8. Order and kindliness know they not.

9. They hearken not to prayer and supplication.

10. From the horse of the mountain came they forth.

11. Of Ea are they the foes.

12. The throne-bearers of the gods are they.

13. To trouble the canal in the street are they set.

14. Evil are they, evil are they !

15. Seven are they, seven are they, seven doubly said are they!"

208 LECTURE III.

" O god of Fire," he asks, " how were those seven begotten, how

grew they up ?

Those seven in the mountain of the sunset were born ;
those seven in the mountain of the sunrise grew up."

Throughout they are regarded as elemental powers,
and their true character as destructive winds and tempests
is but thinly veiled by a cloak of poetic imagery. But
it will be noticed that they already belong to the harm
ful side of nature ; and though the word which I have
rendered " evil," after the example of the Semitic trans
lators, means rather " injurious" than " evil" in our sense
of the word, they are already the products of night and
darkness ; their birth-place is the mountain behind which
the sun sinks into the gloomy lower world. In the 22nd
book of the great work on Astronomy, compiled for Sar-
gon of Accad, they are termed "the seven great spirits"
or galli^ and it is therefore possible that they had already
been identified with the "seven gods of destiny," the
Aniina-ge or " spirits of the lower world," of the cult of
Nipur.

In their gradual development into the Semite Eimmon,
the spirits of the air underwent a change of parentage.
Matu, as we have seen, was, like his kindred wind-gods
of Eridu, the offspring of Ea. But the home of the wind
is rather the sky than the deep, and Meri, "the shining
firmament," was naturally associated with the sky. "When
Ana, "the sky," therefore, became the Semitic Anu,
Eimmon, who united in himself Matu and Meri and other
local gods of wind and weather as well, was made his
son. It is possible that there was another cause working

1 W.A.I, iii. 62, 12. Gdllu was a loan-word from the Sumerian
(/alia, mulla in Accadian.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 209

towards the same result. In Syria, Eimmon was iden
tified with Hadad the Sun-god, and there are indications
that in parts of Babylonia also he had at one time a solar
character. As Meri (or Meru), he could easily pass into
a solar divinity, more especially as the re -duplicated
Mer-mer, " the most glorious," was a title of the meridian
Sun, who was identified in later days with Adar of Nipur,1
while it was also the name of Eimmon himself as adored
in one of the smaller towns of Chaldsea.2 We are told,
moreover, that Eimmon was the god who had gone under
the Accadian appellation of TJtu-edma-guba, " the ever-
glowing sun of the desert."3 The elements, therefore,
existed among the Babylonians, as well as among the
Aramseans, out of which Eimmon could have been trans
formed into a solar deity ; it was only the stronger non-
Semitic influence which caused them to be displaced by
the associations and conceptions that confined his sphere
to the air. Eimmon, accordingly, among the Babylonians
and Assyrians, is the god of winds and cloud, of thunder
and lightning, of storm and rain; he is the inundator
who is called upon to cover the fields of the impious and
unjust with water, and to pour his refreshing streams
into a thirsty land. His wife went by the Accadian

1 W. A. I. ii. 57, 76.

2 W. A. I. ii. 48, 35. " Nebo, the binder of law," is also identified
with "the god Mermer" in W. A. I. ii. 60, 37, but this was in refer
ence to Nebo's original character as the god of the visible universe, who
bound its several parts together. When mermer is explained by mekh u,
"storm," in W. A. I. v. 11, 46, nothing more is meant than that the
god Mermer had come to represent the storm. It is an illustration
of the caution needed in dealing with the statements of the so-called
lexical lists.

3 W. A. I. ii. 49, 30.

210 LECTUBE III.

name of Sala, "the merciful" (?).1 As her husband had
been identified with " the lord of the mountain," so she
too was identified with "the lady of the mountain,"2 to
whom Gudea had built a temple at Tel-loh. As "lady
of the mountain," however, she was more strictly the con
sort of the Sun-god of Eridu ; and a mythological tablet
speaks accordingly of a " Sala of the mountains, the wife
of Merodach." 3 It is to Zarpanit, the wife of Merodach,
again, and not to Sala, that Nebuchadnezzar refers, when
he tells us how he " built in Babylon the House Supreme,
the temple of the lady of the mountain, for the exalted
goddess, the mother who had borne" him. Sala and
Zarpanit, therefore, must once have been one and the
same divinity.

1 The Accadian equivalent of riminu, " merciful," is written with
the ideographs sag or sa, "heart," lal or la, " filling," and sud or su,
"extending" (W. A. I. iv. 9, 27, &c.). But the final character is pro
bably a determinative only, giving the idea of "long-suffering," in
which case we should read sola instead of salasu. In W. A. I. iv. 19,
41, the word is apparently written phonetically, as sag-lil-da ; if so, wo
must read saglal instead of sola. The name of the goddess might then
be explained as " woman," sola having this meaning in Accadian. The
name seems to be interpreted "the goddess of reptiles" (naltsi and
namse\ as well as " the lady of the place of gold," in W. A. I. ii. 57,
33 (where, by the way, the character DIL has the meaning of "place,"
which it has in Amardian or " Protomedic," and in GIS-DIL-TB, the ideo
graphic mode of writing guza, "a throne"). The mountains, more
especially those of the north, were " the land of gold."

2 W. A. I. ii. 57, 33.

3 In W. A. I. iii. 67, 34, Sala is stated to be "the wife of Mul-lil
in the ghost-world." But this seems to refer only to Mul-lil as the \
Semitic Bel, a Sun-god who rules among the shades below. It is thus i
that she is called the wife of Duzu or Tammuz (ii. 57, 34) like A (ii. ;
57, 12). She was, in fact, originally the goddess of the Sun, and con- 1
sequently her connection with Ram man must have been the result of
his amalgamation with Mer or Mermer.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 211

Sala was, furthermore, the "lady (or exalted lady) of
the desert" — a title which brings to one's recollection
the similar title of Eimmon, as " the ever-glowing sun
of the desert-land." It is under this title that she is
addressed in a penitential psalm, where she is named,
not Sala, but Gubara, " the fire-name," and associated
with Matu (Mato), "the lord of the mountain."1 As
the other deities invoked along with her are Ea and
Dav-kina, Merodach and Zarpanit, Nebo and Tasmit,
while the whole psalm is dedicated to INana, the goddess
of Erech, it is clear that the psalm is the composition
of a worshipper of Nana and native of Erech, whose gods
were the gods of Eridu and those who claimed kindred
with them.

"We may, therefore, see in the primitive Sala the female
consort of the Sun-god of Eridu — the original, in fact, of
the Babylonian Zarpanit, who became identified on the
one side with the "lady of the mountain," and on the
other with the wife of Meri, the "bright firmament" of
the starry sky. Her name, Gubara, points to her solar
connection, and makes it probable that she was not the
moon — which does not seem to have been regarded as
a goddess in any part of Babylonia — nor the dawn, but
the evening and morning star. This will explain why
it is that she was known as the goddess of the mountains,
over whose heights Yenus arose and set, or as the mistress
of wisdom and hidden treasure, or, again, as the goddess
of the copper hand.2 Other mythologies have stories of

1 W. A. I. iv. 21, No. 2.

2 W. A. I. ii. 57, 35. The Sun-god Savitar is called " the golden-
handed " in the Veda, a term explained in later Sanskrit literature by
the statement that the hand of the god had been cut at a sacrifice and

p 2

212 LECTURE III.

a solar hero whose hand has been cut off and replaced
by one of gold and bronze, and it is in the light of such
stories that the epithet must be explained. "We are
expressly told that Sala of the copper hand was the wife
of Tammuz, the beautiful Sun-god of Eridu;1 and we
know that Tammuz, the son of the Eiver-god Ea,2 was
the spouse of Istar, the evening star. What wonder,
then, that her later husband Eimmon should have become
the Sun-god of the Syrians, whose untimely death was
mourned in the plain of Jezreel, as the untimely death
of his double, the Babylonian Tammuz, was mourned by
the women of Phoenicia and Jerusalem ?

I must reserve the story of Tammuz and Istar for
another Lecture. We have almost completed now our
survey of the principal deities of Babylonia, of those who
in the struggle for existence outdistanced their compeers,
and in the official inscriptions of Assyria and later Baby
lonia appear at the head of the divine hierarchy. Purely
local in their origin, their worship gradually extended
itself chiefly through the influence of the cities that wor
shipped them, and absorbed at the same time the local
cults that came in their way. The adoption of Accadian
forms of worship by the Semites was accompanied by a
process of generalisation and systematisation. The reli
gion of Accad was adapted to the religious ideas of the
Semites, and was transformed accordingly. The Baalim of
the Semite took the place of the dingirene or " creators" of
the Accadian. The Sun-god assumed a new and impor-

replaced by a golden one. The Teutonic Tyr is similarly one-handed,
and the Keltic Nuad with the silver hand offers a close parallel to the
Chaldaean goddess with the copper hand.

i W. A. I. ii. 57, 34. 2 W. A. I. ii. 56, 31.

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 213

tant place. Wherever the Semite was wholly triumph
ant, wherever he succeeded in founding an empire, as at
Sippara and Babylon, the Sun-god acquired undisputed
sway. "Wherever the older population maintained its
ground, as at Nipur or Eridu, the older deities, leavened
and transformed though they may have been by Semitic
thought, still continued to hold their own. In places
like Erech, where Accadian and Semitic influences seem
to have long struggled for the mastery, the old sky-god
remained indeed in name, but was changed into a Semitic
Baal.

But the process of transformation was long, and it
needed many centuries before it was complete. We
have glimpses out of the distant past of a time when the
two populations lived side by side in peace or war, fight
ing, trading and intermarrying, of Semitic conquerors
filling their courts with Accadian scribes and patronising
the study of Accadian literature, and of Accadian dynasties
Arising at times in Semitic states. Babylonia in those
days must have afforded a close parallel to Egypt during
the centuries of Hyksos dominion. The Semitic invaders
of Egypt soon submitted to the spell of the higher culture
in the midst of which they found themselves. They
borrowed the titles of the Pharaohs ; they patronised the
learning of their Egyptian subjects; and while asserting
the supremacy of their own Baal Sutekh, they yet identi
fied him with the Egyptian Set and adopted the divinities
of the Egyptian pantheon. The learned court of an
Apepi Ea-aa-user, which produced one of the two treatises
on Egyptian geometry that have survived to us, offers a
close parallel to the court of a Sargon of Accad, which

214 LECTURE III.

witnessed the compilation of the standard Babylonian
works on astrology and terrestrial omens.

But there was one important difference between Egypt
and Babylonia. "With the help of Nubian allies, the
Egyptians of the south succeeded, after five hundred
years of submission, in driving the Semitic stranger from
the northern land he had made his own. The older
population of southern Babylonia was never so fortunate.
The Semite had come into Chaldeea not only as a warrior,
but as a trader as well. He had planted himself too
firmly in the cities of the north to be ever expelled. In
Genesis we see Mmrod, the representative of Semitic
domination, establishing his kingdom, not only in Babel
and Erech and Accad, but also in Calneh or Kulunu in
Shinar (Sumer) of the south. And a time came when
Calneh ceased to be the only state of Sumer which
acknowledged the supremacy of the foreigner. Eridu
itself, the sacred city of an immemorial past, the primal
home of Chaldeean culture, became Semitic, and the
monarchs of Babylonia assumed the imperial title of
kings of Accad and Sumer.

But all this happened long before the age of Kham-
muragas, with whom the history of the city of Babylon
begins. The Babylonia of Khammuragas differs but
little from the Babylonia of Nabonidos. The religious
system of the country is already fully formed. Nay,
more; already in the remote age of Sargon of Accad
there are indications that the process of assimilation and
absorption had long been at work. The son and suc
cessor of Sargon was Naram-Sin, "the beloved of the
Moon-god," a sign that the Moon-god of Ur was even

THE GODS OF BABYLONIA. 215

now in favour in the court of Accad. In fact, it must
have been among the priestly literati of Sargon that the
union of Accadian and Semitic religious belief took defi
nite shape. It marked the union of the Accadian and
Semitic elements in the population under Semitic rule.
It is possible that some of the mythological tablets in
which an attempt is made to harmonise the deities of the
various local cults and to bring them into genealogical
order, may go back to this early date. It is more pro
bable, however, that they all belong to that later period
when northern and southern Babylonia had long formed
an united monarchy.

Unchecked, the tendency of Semitic religious thought
would have been to resolve the gods of the popular faith
into one supreme Baal, by the side of whom was throned
his colourless double or wife. This tendency actually
found expression in certain cases. But the cities of
Babylonia had too venerable a history to allow their local
deities to be thus confounded and lost, and the non-
Semitic element in the population, though less and less
represented in official documents, placed a check upon it.
It was the genealogical theory, resuscitated in after times
in the Gnostic doctrine of emanations, which obtained
most favour. The gods became a family, and their
temples palaces in which attendant spirits ministered to
their wants.

At the head of the pantheon stood the trinity of Anu,
Bel of Nipur and Ea. The order in which they were
ranked indicates the relative periods at which the three
gods and the cities which originally worshipped them
became the property of the Semitic race. The rise of
Babylon, however, brought with it the displacement of

216 LECTURE III,

the older Bel of Mpur. He was forced to yield to his
younger rival Eel Merodach, causing endless confusion
to the Babylonian mythologists.

Around the three chief gods were grouped the multi
tudinous deities which Accadian superstition or Semitic
piety had invented and dreamed of. Assur-natsir-pal
declares that there were " 65,000 great gods of heaven
and earth;" and though we may doubt whether the
Assyrian king was not indulging in a little royal exag
geration, it is certain that the task of enumerating them
all would have exhausted the most indefatigable of
priestly scribes. Besides the numberless minor deities of
the towns and villages, there were the divine titles out of
which new gods had been evolved ; divinities which owed
their existence to the linguistic or literary errors of the
Semites ; and, finally, foreign gods like Kittum and Suma-
liya of theKossseans, orLagamar of Susa. As if this goodly
host were not enough, phrases from the ritual of the
temples were elevated to the rank of gods. E-Sagil, for
instance, the temple of Merodach at Babylon, was deified
under the name of " "What does my lord eat ?" and the
spirit of E-Sagil was known as "What does my lord
drink?"1 while the divine porters of the temple were
termed respectively " the binder of the waters of the god
of the sea," and "the giver of water for (purifying) the
hand."2 When we remember how the background of
this vast pantheon was filled with the obscure deities and
spirits of the ancient Accadian cult, whose names survived
in magical charms and exorcisms, while the air above was
occupied by the " 300 spirits of heaven," and the earth

i W, A. I. ii. 56, 16, 17. 2 W. A. I. ii. 56, 18, 19.

THE GOBS OF BABYLONIA. 217

below by "the 600 spirits of earth," we begin to realise
the force of the expression which made the supreme gods
rulers of the " legions " of earth and sky. Bil Jcissat, " the
lord of hosts," was a phrase full of significance to the
believing Babylonian.

It would be useless to waste our time over deities who
never obtained a prominent place in the official hierarchy
of the gods, and of whom we know little beyond the names.
No wand again, when the Assyrian kings made a triumphal
march through Babylonia, they sacrificed to the gods of
the cities through which they passed, and we hear of
Latarak the son of Anu, of Subulu, or of Utsur-amat-sa ;
but they probably knew as little about them as we do.
It is only from local documents like contracts and boun
dary-stones that we can expect to learn anything about
such deities as Supu of Der, and Tug of BJS with the
dragon's face, and what we learn will seldom throw
much light on Babylonian religion as a whole. When
Nebuchadnezzar gathered the gods of Babylonia into his
capital in token that the god of Babylon was henceforth
lord of all the Chaldsean gods, with two exceptions it is
only to deities like Sin and Samas, Eimmon and Gula,
that he erected shrines. "The lady of the house of
heaven" and " the divine son of the house" are the only
divinities whom he mentions that bear unaccustomed
names, and they are doubtless merely titles of Beltis and
Adar or Nergal.

As long, however, as these multitudinous deities were
believed to exist, so long was it also believed that they
could injure or assist. Hence come such expressions as
those which meet us in the Penitential Psalms, " To the
god that is known and that is unknown, to the goddess

218 LECTURE III.

that is known and that is unknown, do I lift my prayer."
Hence, too, the care with which the supreme Baal was
invoked as " lord of the hosts of heaven and earth," since
homage paid to the master was paid to the subjects as
well. Hence, finally, the fact that the temples of the
higher gods, like the Capitol at Eome, became gathering-
places for the inferior divinities, and counterparts on the
earth of "the assembly of the gods" in heaven. That
curious product of Mandaite imagination, the " Book
of Nabathean Agriculture," which was translated into
Arabic by Ibn Wahshiya in the 10th century, sets before
us a curious picture of the temple of Tammuz in Babylon.
"The images (of the gods)," it tells us, "congregated
from all parts of the world to the temple of el-Askul
(E-Sagil) in Babylon, and betook themselves to the temple
(JiaiJml) of the Sun, to the great golden image that is
suspended between heaven and earth in particular. The
image of the sun stood, they say, in the midst of the
temple, surrounded by all the images of the world. Next
to it stood the images of the sun in all countries ; then
those of the moon ; next those of Mars ; after them the
images of Mercury ; then those of Jupiter ; next of
Yenus ; and last of all, of Saturn. Thereupon the image
of the sun began to bewail Tammuz and the idols to
weep ; and the image of the sun uttered a lament over
Tammuz and narrated his history, whilst the idols all
wept from the setting of the sun till its rising at the end
of that night. Then the idols flew away, returning to
their own countries."

The details are probably borrowed from the great temple
of pre-Mohammedan Mecca, but they correspond very
faithfully with what we now know the interior of one of

THE GODS OP BABYLONIA. 219

the chief temples of Babylonia and Assyria to have been
like. Fragments have been preserved to us of a tablet
which enumerated the names of the minor deities whose
images stood in the principal temples of Assyria, attend
ing like servants upon the supreme god. Among them
are the names of foreign divinities, to whom the catholic
spirit of Babylonian religion granted a place in the
national pantheon when once the conquest of the towns
and countries over which they presided had proved their
submission to the Babylonian and Assyrian gods ; even
Khaldis, the god of Ararat, figures among those who
dwelt in one of the chief temples of Assyria,1 and whose
names were invoked by the visitor to the shrine. The
spectacle of such a temple, with the statue or symbol of
the supreme Baal rising majestically in the innermost
cell, and delivering his oracles from within the hidden
chamber of that holy of holies, while the shrines of his
wife and offspring were grouped around him, and the
statues of ministering deities stood slave-like in front,
was a fitting image of Babylonian religion. " The gods
many and lords many" of an older creed still survived,
but they had become the jealously- defined officials of an
autocratic court. The democratic polytheism of an earlier
day had become imperial. Bel was the counterpart of
his vicegerent the Babylonian king, with this difference,
that whereas Babylonia had been fused into an united
monarchy, the hierarchy of the gods still acknowledged
more than one head. How long Anu and Ea, or Samas
and Sin, would have continued to share with Merodach
the highest honours of the official cult, we cannot say ;

1 W. A. I. iii. 66, Rev. 7.

220 LECTURE III.

the process of degradation had already begun when
Babylonia ceased to be an independent kingdom and
Babylon the capital of an empire. Merodach remained
a supreme Baal— the cylinder inscription of Cyrus proves
so much — but he never became the one supreme god.

LECTURE IV.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAE; PKOMETHEUS AND
TOTEMISM.

AMONG the mythological poems bequeathed to us by
ancient Babylonia is one which, though doubtless based
on Accadian materials, has survived to us only in a Semi
tic form. It recounts the descent of the goddess Istar
into Hades in search of the healing waters which should
restore to life her bridegroom Tammuz, the young and
beautiful Sun-god, slain by the cruel hand of night and
winter. The poem is as follows :

1. "To the land whence none return, the region of (darkness),

2. Istar, the daughter of Sin, (inclined) her ear,

3. yea, Istar herself, the daughter of Sin, inclined (her) ear

4. to the house of darkness, the seat of the god Irkalla,

5. to the house from whose entrance there is no exit,

6. to the road from whose passage there is no return,

7. to the house from whose visitors the light is excluded,'

8. the place where dust is their bread (and) their food is mud.

9. The light they behold not, in darkness they dwell,

10. they are clad like birds in a garment of feathers.

11. Over the door and the bolt the dust is scattered.

12. Istar, on arriving at the gate of Hades,

13. to the keeper1 of the gate addresses the word :

14. ' Opener (keeper) of the waters, open thy gate I

15. Open thy gate that I may enter !

1 Literally "opener" (pitu or muselii).

222 LECTURE IV.

16. If thou openest not the gate that I may enter,

17. I will smite the door, the bolt I will shatter,

18. I will smite the threshold and pass through the portals.

19. I will raise up the dead to devour the living,

20. above the living the dead shall exceed in number.'

21. The keeper opened his mouth and speaks;

22. he says to the princess Istar :

23. * Stay, 0 lady, thou must not break it down !

24. Let me go and declare thy name to Nin-ki-gal, the queen of

Hades.'

25. The keeper descended and declares (her name to ISTin-ki-gal

[Allat]) :

26. ' 0 goddess, the water thy sister Istar (is come to seek) ;

27. trying (batqirtu) the mighty bars (she has threatened to break

open the doors) (?).'

28. When Allat (heard) this (she opened her mouth and says :)

29. 'Like a cut-off herb has (Istar) descended (into Hades);

30. like the lip of a drooping reed1 she has prayed for (the waters

of life).

31. What matters to me her wish 1 what (matters to me) her anger?2

32. (When she says :) this water with (my bridegroom)

33. like food would I eat, like beer would I drink :

34. let me weep for the heroes who have left (their) wives ;

35. let me weep for the handmaids whom from the bosom of their

husbands (thou hast taken) ;

36. for the little child let me weep whom thou hast taken ere his

days are come.

37. Go, keeper (nevertheless), open for her (thy) gate ;

38. Strip3 her also according to the ancient rules.'

39. The keeper went, he opened for her (his) gate :

40. < Enter, 0 lady, let Cutha be glad (at thee);

41. let the palace of Hades rejoice before thee.'

1 See W. A. I. ii. 22, 8. Instead of sapat, ulip," Jeremias (Die
Hollenfalirt der Istar, 1886) reads sctbat, "cutting off;" but he has
misunderstood the reference of lines 29, 30.

2 Literally, " What has her heart brought me ? what has her liver
(brought me)?"

3 Uppidh, see W. A. I. ii. 29, 38. This is preferable to my old
reading uppis, "bewitch."

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 223

42. The first gate he made her enter, and shut1 (it); he threw

down the mighty crown of her head.

43. ' Why, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown down the mighty crown of

my head?'

44. ' Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat.'

45. The second gate he made her enter and he shut; he threw

away the earrings of her ears.

46. ' Wherefore, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown away the earrings of

my ears'?'

47. ' Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat.'

48. The third gate he made her enter and he closed; he threw

away the precious stones of her neck(lace).

49. * Wherefore, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown away the precious

stones of my neck(lace) ? '

50. ' Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat.'

51. The fourth gate he made her enter and closed ; he threw away

the ornaments of her breast.

52. * Wherefore, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown away the ornaments of

my breast 1 '

53. 'Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat.'

54. The fifth gate he made her enter and closed ; he threw away

the gemmed girdle of her waist.

55. * Wherefore, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown away the gemmed

girdle of my waist?'

56. ' Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat/

57. The sixth gate he made her enter and closed ; he threw away

the bracelets of her hands and her feet.

58. ' Wherefore, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown away the bracelets of

my hands and my feet V

59. 'Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat.'

60. The seventh gate he made her enter and closed; he threw

away the cincture of her body.

61. 'Wherefore, 0 keeper, hast thou thrown away the cincture of

my body?'

62. * Enter, 0 lady, (for) thus are the orders of Allat.'

63. After that Istar had descended into the land of Hades,

64. Allat beheld her and was haughty before her.

1 Not ( ' unclothe," as Jeremias. Matsu means " to shut," " discon
tinue."

224 LECTURE IV.

65. Istar took not counsel, she besought her with oaths.1

66. Allat opened her mouth and says,

67. to Namtar (the plague-demon), her messenger, the word she

utters :

68. ' Go, Namtar, (take Istar from) me, and

69. lead her out ; sixty times (strike) Istar (with disease) :

69. the disease of the eyes (into) her (eyes) ;

70. the disease of the side (into) her (side) ;

71. the disease of the feet into her (feet) ;

72. the disease of the heart into (her heart) ;

73. the disease of the head strike (into her head) ;

74. into her, even the whole of her, and into (each limb strike dis

ease).'

75. After that the lady Istar (into Hades had descended),

76. with the cow the bull would not unite (the ass would not

approach the female),

77. the handmaid (in the street would not approach the freeman),

78. the freeman ceased (to give his order),2

79. (the handmaid ceased to give her gift ?).

80. Pap-sukal, the messenger of the mighty gods, bowed his face

before (the Sun-god) :

81. ' There is woe below,3 (for all things) are full of destruction

(nodi):

82. The Sun-god went ; in the presence of Sin his father he (stood),

83. in the presence of Ea the king (his) tears flowed down :

84. ' Istar descended to the earth and has not re-ascended.

85. From the time that Istar has descended to the land of Hades,

86. with the cow the bull will not unite, the ass will not approach

the female,

87. the handmaid in the street will not approach the freeman,

88. the freeman has ceased to give his order,

89. the handmaid has ceased to give her (gift ?).'

90. Ea in the wisdom of his heart formed (a man) ;*

1 Jeremias, " she threw herself on her." This, however, could
hardly be the sense of the shaphel of bu, " to come."

2 Perhaps better with Jeremias : " slept while giving."

3 Saplis ; if we read labis, we must translate, with Jeremias, " clothed
in a dress of mourning." But in this case, it would be difficult to
account for the omission of the words of Pap-sukal.

4 So Jeremias.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 225

91. he created Atsu-su-namir (' His rising is seen'), the androgyne ;l

92. ' Go, Atsu-su-namir, towards the gate of Hades set thy face ;

93. let the seven gates of Hades be opened before thee ;

94. let Allat see thee and rejoice at thy presence,

95. when her heart is at rest and her liver is appeased.

96. Conjure her also by the names of the great gods.

97. Turn thy heads ; to the resting-place2 of the stormy wind set

thine ear ;

98. the home of the pure one,3 the resting-place of the stormy wind,

let them prepare (?) ; the waters in the midst let her drink.

99. When Allat heard this

100. she struck her girdle, she bit her thumb :

101. ' Thou hast asked of me a request none should request !

102. Go, Atsu-su-namir, let me injure thee with a great injury 1*

103. May the garbage of the sewers of the city be thy food !

104. May the vessels of the daughters5 of the city be thy drink !

105. May the darkness of the dungeon be thy habitation 1

106. May the threshold be thy seat !

107. May drought and famine strike thine offspring !'

108. Allat opened her mouth and says,

109. to Namtar her messenger the word she addresses :

110. ' Go, Namtar, strike open the firmly-built palace,

111. shatter the thresholds (which) bear up the stones of light;

112. bid the spirits of earth (Anunaki) come forth and seat them on

a throne of gold ;

1 Assinnu explained as "the female man" or "creature in W. A. I.
ii. 32, 22. Ziinmern is probably right in connecting the word with
itiinu, "a festival," since the tablet in which it appears seems to enu
merate various classes of priests ; and in W. A. I. ii. 27, 58, " the man"
or "creature of Istar" is called Icalu, i.e. one of the Galli. Atsu-
su-namir may be also read Atsu-sunamir, "Rising, cause to shine"
(Shaphael imperative). Dr. Oppert reads Uddusu-namir, " renewal of
light," but this would require the form Uddus-namari (or nameri). In
an unnumbered text given above (p. 81, note 2), the aMinnu appears
as the eunuch-priest of Bel armed with a flute.

2 'Sukhal, from faltkalu, for which see W. A. I. v. 40, 11, and K 161.
i. 26. According to George Smith, fakhalu is a synonym, of sadakhu,
"to reach."

3 Jeremias, "(Say,) No, my lady." * See W. A. I. ii. 10, 3.
6 See, however, W. A, I. ii, 22, 20.

Q

226 LECTURE IV.

113. over Istar pour the waters of life and bring her before me.'

114. Namtar went (and) smote the firmly-built palace,

115. he shattered the thresholds (which) bear up the stones of light,

116. he bade the spirits of earth come forth, on a throne of gold did

he seat (them),

117. over Istar he poured the waters of life and brought her along.

118. The first gate he passed her out of and restored to her the

cincture of her body ;

119. The second gate he made her pass, and restored to her the

bracelets of her hands and her feet.

120. The third gate he made her pass, and restored to her the

gemmed girdle of her waist.

121. The fourth gate he made her pass, and restored to her the

ornaments of her breasts.

122. The fifth gate he made her pass, and restored to her the jewels

of her necklace.

123. The sixth gate he made her pass, and restored to her the earrings

of her ears.

124. The seventh gate he made her pass, and restored to her the

mighty crown of her head.

125. < If she (i.e. Allat) has not given thee that for which the ransom

is paid her, turn back to her again

126. for Tammuz the bridegroom of (thy) youth.

127. Pour over him the pure waters, (anoint him) with precious oil.

128. Clothe him with a purple robe; a ringf?)1 of crystal let him

strike upon (the hand).

129. Let Samkhat (the goddess of joy) enter2 the liver . . . .'

130. (Before this) the goddess Tillili had taken her jewels,

131. the eye-stones also (which) were unbroken;

132. the goddess Tillili had heard of the death3 of her brother

(Tammuz) ; she broke the jewels4 (which she had taken),

1 Gibu is not to be read ideographically, as is supposed by Jeremias
(who has misunderstood lines 135 — 137); comp. gibu in Strassmaier,
p. 227, and gabu in K 4223, col. ii. (ana kliarran sarri halak-su gaM
la illik). See, however, the text I have quoted above, p. 81, note 2.

8 Linaha ; the word is explained by passages in the legends of the
shepherd ENNUN-KA-TI (K 2546, Obv. 11), and of Atarpi (col. iii. 47, 57).

3 Tkrim ; in "W. A. I. v. 50, 62, the verb ikrimu is used of the vio
lent " carrying below " of a hero by " the handmaid of a lilu " or
"demon." Jeremias reads ihkil, "cry of woe."

4 More literally, " jewelled circlet" (sutartum); see W.A.I, v. 6, 45.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 227

133. even the eye-stones which were full of the face (of light?),

134. (crying) '0 my brother, the only one, do not destroy me/

135. In the day that Tammuz bound on me a ring (?) of crystal and

a bracelet of turquoise, at that time he bound (them) on me,

136. at that time he bound (them) on me. Let the wailing men

and wailing women

137. bind (them) on the funeral pyre, and smell the sweet savour.'
COLOPHON. The property of Assur-bani-pal, king of multitudes,

king of Assyria."

The poem throws light upon certain passages both in
the Old Testament and in classical authors, and in turn
receives light from them. On the one hand, we now
know who was that Tammuz in whose honour Ezekiel
saw the women of Jerusalem weeping at the gate of
"the Lord's house."1 On the other hand, it is clear that
the Tammuz and Istar of the Babylonian legend are the
Adonis and Aphrodite of Greek mythology. Like Tam
muz, Adonis, the beloved one of Aphrodite, is slain by
the boar's tusk of winter, but eventually ransomed from
Hades by the prayers of the goddess. It has long been
recognised that Aphrodite, the Kyprian goddess of love
and war, came to Hellas from Phoenicia, whether or not
we agree with Dr. Hommel in seeing in her name a
mere etymological perversion of the Phoenician Ashtoreth.
Adonis is the Phoenician Adoni, "my lord," the cry
with which the worshippers of the stricken Sun-god
mourned his untimely descent into the lower world.

The cry was familiar throughout the land of Palestine.
In the valley of Megiddo, by the plain of Jezreel, each
year witnessed "the mourning for Hadad-Bimmon"
(Zech. xii. 11), while hard by Amos heard the men of

1 Ezek. viii. 14.
Q2

228 LECTURE IV.

Israel mourning for "the only son" (Am. viii. 10), and
the prophet of Judah gives the very words of the refrain:
"Ah me, my brother, and ah me, my sister! Ah me,
Adonis, and ah me, his lady!" (Jer. xxii. 18). The
words were carried across the western sea to men of an
alien race and language. " Cry ailinon, ailinon ! woe,
woe!" says the Greek poet of Athens,1 and already in
Homeric days2 the dirge was attributed to a mythic
Linos whose magic fate was commemorated in its open
ing words: "0 Linos, Linos!" Linos, however, had
no existence except in a popular etymology ; the Greek
ailinos is in reality the Phoenician ai-lenu, " alas for us !"
with which the lamentations for the death of the divine
Adonis were wont to begin. Like the refrain quoted by
Jeremiah, the words eventually go back to Babylonia,
and find their counterpart in the closing lines of the old
Babylonian poem I have translated above. When Tillili
commences her wail over the dead Tammuz, she cries,
like the women of Judah and Phoenicia, " 0 my brother,
the only one !" It was, above all, in the Phoenician town
of Gebal or Byblos that the death of Adonis was com
memorated. Here, eight miles to the north of Beyrut,
the ancient military road led from eastern Asia to the
shores of the Mediterranean, and brought from early
days the invading armies of Babylonia and Assyria to
the coasts and cities of Canaan. Hard by was the river
of Adonis, the Nahr Ibrahim of to-day, which rolled
through a rocky gorge into the sea. Each year, when
the rains and melting snows of spring stained its waters
with the red marl of the mountains, the people of Gebai

i JSskhylos, Agam. 121. 2 //. xviii. 570.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 229

beheld in it the blood of the slaughtered Sun-god. It was
then, in the month of Tammuz or June, that the funeral-
festival of the god was held. For seven days it lasted.
" Gardens of Adonis," as they were called, were planted,
pots filled with earth and cut herbs, which soon withered
away in the fierce heat of the summer sun — fitting
emblems of the lost Adonis himself. Meanwhile, the
streets and gates of the temples were filled with throngs
of wailing women. They tore their hair, they disfigured
the face, they cut the breast with sharp knives, in token
of the agony of their grief. Their cry of lamentation
went up to Heaven mingled with that of the Galli, the
emasculated priests of Ashtoreth, who shared with them
their festival of woe over her murdered bridegroom.
Adonis, the young, the beautiful, the beloved of Ash
toreth, was dead ; the bright sun of the springtide, like
the verdure of nature which he had called into life, was
slain and withered by the hot blasts of the summer.

In later times, after the revolt of Egypt from the
Assyrian king and the rise of the 26th Dynasty, the cult
of Adonis at Gebal entered upon a new phase. Egyptian
beliefs and customs made their way into Phoenicia along
with Egyptian political influence, and the story of Adonis
was identified with that of the Egyptian Osiris. As the
Sun-god Osiris had been slain and had risen again from
the dead, so, too, had the Phoenician Adonis descended
into Hades and been rescued again from its grasp. How
long, indeed, he had remained in the world below was
a matter of doubt. There were some who said that he
shared half the year with the goddess of death, and the
other half only with the goddess of love; there were
others who declared that his year was divided into three — •

230 LECTURE IV.

four months was he condemned to dwell in Hades, four
months he was free to live where he might choose, while
the other four were passed in the companionship of Ash-
toreth, and that it was to Ashtoreth that he devoted his
months of freedom. But all agreed that the Sun-god of
spring was not compelled to live for ever in the gloomy
under-world; a time came when he and nature would
alike revive. It was inevitable, therefore, that in the daj^s
of Egyptianising fashion, Adonis and Osiris should be
looked upon as the same god, and that the festival of
Adonis at Gebal should be assimilated to that of Osiris
in Egypt. And so it came about that a new feature was
added to the festival of Adonis ; the days of mourning
were succeeded by days of rejoicing ; the death of Adonis
was followed by the announcement of his resurrection.
A head of papyrus came from Egypt over the waves;
while, on the other hand, an Alexandrian legend told
how the mourning Isis had found again at Gebal the
chest in which the dismembered limbs of Osiris were laid.
It is clear that the Babylonian poet who sang of the
descent of Istar into Hades had no conception of a festival
of joy that followed immediately upon a festival of mourn
ing. Nevertheless, the whole burden of his poem is the
successful journey of the goddess into the under- world
for the sake of the precious waters which should restore
her beloved one to life. Even in Babylonia, therefore,
there must have been a season when the name of Tammuz
was commemorated, not with words of woe, but with joy
and rejoicing. But it could have been only when the
fierce heats of the summer were past ; when the northern
wind, which the Accadians called "the prospering one,"
began again to blow; and when the Sun-god regained

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 231

once more the vigour of his spring-tide youth. That
there had once been a festival of this kind is indicated
by the fact that the lamentations for his death did not
take place in all parts of Syria at the same time. "We
learn from Ammianus that when Julian arrived at Antioch
in the late autumn, he found the festival of Adonis being
celebrated "according to ancient usage," after the in
gathering of the harvest and before the beginning of the
new year, in Tisri or October. It must have been in
the autumn, too, that the feast of Hadad-Eimmon was
observed, to which Zechariah alludes ; and Ezekiel saw
the women weeping for Tammuz in " the sixth month."
Nay, Macrobius l even tells us that the Syrian worshippers
of Adonis in his time explained the boar's tusk which had
slain the god as the cold and darkness of winter, his
return to the upper world being his " victory over the
first six zodiacal signs, along with the lengthening day
light."

We can draw but one conclusion from all this. The
resurrection of Tammuz had once been commemorated as
well as his death, and the festivals had been identified,
not only with that of the Egyptian Osiris, as at Gebal,
but also with those of other Semitic forms of the Sun-god,
of Hadad and of Eimmon. When Macrobius states that
Adad meant "the only one" in Syrian, he implies that
Adad or Hadad — the Sun-god whose festival fell after
the harvests of autumn — was identical with Tammuz.
In Babylonia, Tammuz was the Sun-god of spring ; his
foe was the summer heat ; his death was mourned in the
month of June. If there was another feast in which
grief gave place to joy at his restoration to life, it was

. l Saturn, i. 21.

232 LECTURE TV.

separate from that which celebrated his death, and must
have taken place at a different time of the year. In its
transplantation to the west, however, the cult of Tammuz-
Adonis underwent a change. He was identified with
other forms of the solar deity ; his festivals were merged
into theirs; and, except in places like Gebal, where a
natural phenomenon prevented the alteration, the anni
versary of his death was shifted to the fall of the year.
He ceased to be the Sun-god of spring, and became
the Sun-god of summer. In the highlands of Syria the
summer was not the dangerous foe it was in Babylonia ;
it was, on the contrary, a kindly friend, whose heats
quickened and fostered the golden grain. Winter, and
not summer, was the enemy who had slain the god.

The story of Tammuz was not of Semitic invention,
however much it may owe, in the form in which we know
it, to Semitic imagination. The month of Tammuz was
called in the Accadian calendar " the month of the errand
of Istar," a clear proof that the legend of the Descent of
the goddess into Hades was already known. Nor is the
name of Tammuz itself of Semitic origin. The Semites
did not agree about the precise form which it should
assume, and it is probable that the form (Tammuz) which
prevailed in the west was due to a " popular etymology."
At all events, the Assyro-Babylonian form is not Tammuz,
but Duzu, itself contracted from Duwuzu, and a fair
representative of the original Accadian Dumu-zi or
Duwu-zi, " the son of life." The word was interpreted
by the Semites as meaning the " offspring," "the only
son;"1 but it may be merely a shortened form of the
name Dumu-zi-apzu, " the son of the spirit of the deep."

i W. A. I. ii. 36, 54.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAK. 233

The "spirit of the deep" is of course Ea, as is expressly
stated in a mythological tablet,1 where Dumu-zi-apzu is
given as the name of one of his six sons. How early the
designation must be, is shown by the fact that Ea appears
in it as not yet a god, but as a spirit only. We are
carried back to the first dawn of Chaldeean religious
belief. The name was translated by the Semites "Timmuz
(or Dimmuz) of the flood" (W.A.I, ii. 47, 29), and the
solar character of the deity was indicated by writing his
name with ideographs that signified "the maker of fire"
($fw-«s*).a But this very mode of writing the name,
which probably grew up in the court of Sargon of Accad,
proves that already the name had lost its last element.
The "son of the spirit of the deep" had become "the
son of life," "the only son" of the god Ea. It is thus
that a mythological tablet gives " the Eiver-god," who is
but Ea under another title, a single son Duzi,3 where
the name has assumed its contracted Semitic form, and
is written with ideographs that mean " the heart of life."4

1 W. A. I. ii. 56, 33—38.

2 Tim-izi, or Dim-izi, is a good example of what Halevy has termed
the rebus. As in several other cases, notably that of the Fire-god
Gibil, the two elements of the name are transposed in writing (Izi-tim
instead of Tim-izi). The tablet in which the name is explained is a
commentary on an old astrological text, giving explanations of the rare
•;vords and ideographs contained in the text. The text may have
emanated from the court of Sargon at Accad. Izi is given as the pro
nunciation of the Accadian word for "fire" in 82. 8 — 16. 1. Rev. 15.

3 W.A.I, ii. 56, 31.

^ 4 The spelling may have originated at Accad. At all events, both
A, the wife of the Sun-god of Sippara, and Sala, " of the mountain of
gold," are called the wives of Duzu in W. A. I. ii. 57. 12. 34. It is
possible that in W. A. I. ii. 54. 8, 9, we ought to read Duzu and Dazu ;
if so, the two primordial principles, the male Duzu and the female

234 LECTURE IV.

We have just seen that the pronunciation Timmuz
was once known to the Babylonian scribes. But it never
found its way into the language and literature of the
country. The medial labial became a semi-vowel ; and
the attempt to give a Semitic colouring to the word
by hardening the initial consonant, never succeeded in
expelling the pronunciation which their Accadian neigh
bours had made familiar to the Semites of Babylonia.
The case, however, was different in other portions of the
Semitic world. Here there was no Accadian population
to prevent the Semitised form from holding full sway,
and it was accordingly as Tammuz (or Timmuz) that the
name passed to the west. It is probable that the inter
mediaries were those Aramaean tribes who stretched across
the desert from the borders of Babylonia to the fields of
Syria, and were known in after days under the compre
hensive title of Nabathseans. At any rate, the worship of
Tammuz could not have been introduced into Palestine
by the Assyrian conquests, as has been suggested ; had
it been so, the name of the god would have had a
different form. Nor again, had such been the case, could
we have explained the early prevalence of the cult of
Adonis in Phoenicia and Cyprus,1 and the traces that it
left even upon Homeric Greece. The name and story of
Tammuz must have come to Phoenicia in those remote
times when it was whispered that " Kronos" or Ea had

Dazu, will be here identified with Arm (and Anat). "What makes this
the more likely is that a few lines further Alala and Tillili are also
identified with Aim and Anat.

1 The name of Tamassos, the city in whose neighbourhood were the
famous copper-mines of the island, perhaps preserved a recollection of
the name of Tammuz. It is called Tametsi by Esar-haddon.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 235

taken Yeud,1 his "only begotten son," and arraying
him in royal robes had sacrificed him on an altar in a
season of distress.2

Greek mythology itself knew the name of Tammuz as
well as that of Adonis. Theias or Thoas3 was not only
the Lemnian husband of Myrina and the king of the
Tauric Khersonese who immolated strangers on the altars
of Artemis, he was also king of Assyria and father of
Adonis and his sister Myrrha or Smyrna. In the Kyprian
myth the name of Theias is transformed into Kinyras ;
but, like Theias, he is the father of Adonis by his daughter
Myrrha. Myrrha is the invention of a popular etymo
logy ;4 the true form of the name was Smyrna or Myrina,
a name famous in the legendary annals of Asia Minor.
Myrina or Smyrna, it was said, was an Amazonian queen,
and her name is connected with the four cities of the
western coast — Smyrna, Kyme, Myrina and Ephesos —
whose foundation was ascribed to Amazonian heroines.
But the Amazons were really the warrior priestesses of
the great Asiatic goddess, whom the Greeks called the
Artemis of Ephesos, and who was in origin the Istar of
Babylonia modified a little by Hittite influence. It was
she who, in the Asianic cult of Attys or Hadad, took the
place of Istar and Aphrodite ; for just as Attys himself
was Tammuz, so the goddess with whom he was asso
ciated was Istar. At Hierapolis, which succeeded to the
religious fame and beliefs of the ancient Hittite city of

1 Assyrian edu, "only one." 2 Philo Bybl. p. 44.

8 Thoas is practically identical with the Ssabian Ta'uz. For Theias,
the Assyrian king, see Apollod. iii. 14, 4 ; Tzetzes, ad Lykopli. 91.

4 The Aramaic marthd, "mistress," or the Assyrian inartu, "daughter,"
may have assisted the etymology; compare the Biblical name Miriam.

236 LECTURE IV.

Carchemish, the name under which the goddess went
seems to have been Semiramis,1 and it is possible that
Semiramis and Smyrna are but varying forms of the same
word. However this may be, in the Kyprian Kinyras
who takes the place of Theias we have a play upon the
Phoenician kinnor, or " cither," which is said to have been
used in the worship of Adonis. Eut its real origin seems
to be indicated by the name of Gingras which Adonis
himself bore.2 Here it is difficult not to recognize the
old Accadian equivalent of Istar, Gingira or Gingiri,
"the creatress."3

The fact that Tammuz was the son of Ea points unmis
takably to the source both of his name and of his worship.
He must have been the primitive Sun-god of Eridu,
standing in the same relation to Ea, the god of Eridu,
that Adar stood to Mul-lil, the god of Mpur. It is even
possible that the boar whose tusk proved fatal to Adonis
may originally have been Adar himself. Adar, as we
have seen, was called the "lord of the swine" in the
Accadian period, and the Semitic abhorrence of the ani
mal may have used it to symbolise the ancient rivalry
between the Sun-god of Mpur and the Sun-god of Eridu.4
Those who would see in the Cain and Abel of Scripture
the representatives of elemental deities, and who follow
Dr. Oppert in explaining the name of Abel by the Baby
lonian ablu, " the son," slightly transformed by a popular
etymology, may be inclined to make them the Adar and
Tammuz of Chaldeean faith.

1 Lucian, De Dea Syria, 33, 39.

2 Athen. iv. 174, xiv. 618.

3 W. A. I. ii. 48, 29 ; K 170. Rev. 7 (m-gi-ri).

4 See above, p. 153.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 237

As mother of Tammuz, Dav-kina, the wife of Ea, had
a special name. She is called Tsirdu, or 'Sirdu1 — a word
in which I believe we may see the Assyrian surdu, "a
falcon." Now it will be remembered that 'Sirrida, also
written 'Sirdam, and pronounced 'Sirgam, 'Sirrigal or
'Sirriga, 'Surga and Mrda,2 in the different dialects of
pre-Semitic Chaldsea, was a title of A, the wife of the
Sun-god of Sippara or Accad. As we are told that a
temple of Tammuz existed at Accad, where it was known
by the double name of " the tower of mighty bulk" and
"the shrine of observation,"3 it would seem that the
worship of Tammuz had been transported from Eridu
to the capital of Sargon at the time when the culture of
southern Babylonia made its way to the north, and the
empire of Sargon was fusing the civilisation and religion
of the country into a single whole. It was then that
the Sun-god of Eridu and the Sun-god of Accad would
naturally be identified together, and that the wife of
Samas of Accad should become the goddess whom mytho
logy represented as at once the wife and the mother of
Tammuz.

But the primitive home of Tammuz had been in that

1 W. A. I. ii. 59, 9. As she seems to be identified with Istar in the
same passage, we may conclude that the compiler of the mythological
list regarded her as equally the mother and the wife of Tammuz.

2 W. A. I. ii. 57. 11, 24, 23, 21, 22, 26. In line 26 the name of A
is also written phonetically by means of the ideograph for father (a).
In lines 30, 31, SIR-UT-KAN and SIR-UT-AM must each be read 'Sirdam
(or 'Sirudam). See above, p. 178.

3 W. A. I. ii. 50. 10, 11. It would appear from this that the pardkn,
or "shrine," was, like that of Bel-Merodach at Babylon, in the highest
chamber of the ziggurat, or " tower," from whence observations of the
sky could be made.

238 LECTURE IV.

" garden" of Edin, or Eden, which Babylonian tradition
placed in the immediate vicinity of Eridu.1 The frag
ment of an old bilingual hymn has been preserved,
which begins in the following way :

1. "(In) Eridu a stalk2 grew over-shadowing; in a holy place

did it become green ;

2. its root ([sur]sum) was of white crystal which stretched towards

the deep ;

3. (before) Ea was its course in Eridu, teeming with fertility ;8

4. its seat was the (central) place4 of the earth ;

5. its foliage (1) was the couch of Zikum (the primaeval) mother.

6. Into the heart of its holy house which spread its shade like a

forest hath no man entered.

7. (There is the home) of the mighty mother who passes across

the sky.

8. (In) the midst of it was Tammuz.

10. (There is the shrine ?) of the two (gods)."

The description reminds us of the famous Ygg-drasil

1 Hence his mother (and wife) is called " the lady of Edin" (W. A. I.
ii. 59. 10, 11.

2 See K 165, 22 (U-QI gesdin), " the stalk of a grape." Qi ( = lamma)
tur is the Assyrian epitdtu, "a small stalk" (W. A. I. ii. 41. 52, 56).
U-QI is also explained as ritusitehu, "a growing slip" (W. A. I. ii. 41, 8).
We are reminded of the old story of Jack and the Bean-stalk as well
as of the Polynesian tree which enables the climber to ascend into the
heavenly land. The mother of Tammuz was called " the (mistress) of
the vine" (W.A.I, ii. 59, 11). Hommel (Die Semitisclien Volker,
p. 406) very ingeniously reads the "Qi-tree" as gis-kin, in Accadian
mus-kin, from which he derives the Assyrian mmukkanu or mussikannut
" a palm." But the Semitic rendering is not ukkanu, as he reads, but
kiskanu, from the Accadian giskin. The palm was the sacred tree of
Babylonia, and Adar was " lord of the date."

3 The original seems to be literally, "while (before Ea) it went
( = grew), Eridu was richly fertile."

4 This appears to be the meaning of the line, the site of the tree
being regarded as, like Delphi among the Greeks, the op^aAos of the
earth. The Sumerian equivalent of " earth" is SI-MAD, which must be
read mad (W. A. I. v. 38, 59) with the determinative prefix.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 239

of Norse mythology, the world-tree whose roots descend
into the world of death, while its branches rise into
Asgard, the heaven of the gods. The Babylonian poet
evidently imagined his tree also to be a world-tree, whose
roots stretched downwards into the abysmal deep, where
Ea presided, nourishing the earth with the springs and
streams that forced their way upwards from it to the
surface of the ground. Its seat was the earth itself,
which stood midway between the deep below and Zikum,
the primordial heavens, above, who rested as it were
upon the overshadowing branches of the mighty " stem."
Within it, it would seem, was the holy house of Dav-
kina, "the great mother," and of Tammuz her son, a
temple too sacred and far hidden in the recesses of the
earth for mortal man to enter. It is perhaps a remi
niscence of this mystic temple that we find in the curious
work on "Nabathsean Agriculture," composed in the
fourth or fifth century by a Mandaite of Chaldaea, where
we are told of the temple of the sun in Babylon, in
which the images of the gods from all the countries of
the world gathered themselves together to weep for
Tammuz.1 What the tree or " stalk" was which sprang

1 Ibn Wahshiyah, the translator of the Nabathcean Agriculture of
Kuthami into Arabic, adds that he had " lit upon another Nabathtean
book, in which the legend of Tammuz was narrated in full ; how he
summoned a king to worship the seven (planets) and the twelve (signs
of the Zodiac), and how the king put him to death, and how he still
lived after being killed, so that he had to put him to death several
times in a cruel manner, Tammuz coming to life again after each time,
until at last he died ; and behold, it was identical with the legend of
St. George that is current among the Christians." Abu Sayid Wahb
ibn Ibrahim, in his calendar of the Ssabian festivals, says under the
month Tammuz: " On the 15th of this month is the festival of the
weeping women, which is identical with Ta'uz, a festival held in honour

240 LECTUBE IV.

up like the bean-stalk of our old nursery tale, is indicated
in the magical text to which the fragment about it has
been appended.1 In this, Ea describes to Merodach the
means whereby he is to cure a man who is possessed of
the seven evil spirits. He is first to go to "the cedar-
tree, the tree that shatters the power of the incubus,
upon whose core the name of Ea is recorded," and then,
with the help of "a good masal" or phylactery which
is placed on the sick man's head as he lies in bed at
night, to invoke the aid of the Fire-god to expel the
demons. It is the cedar, therefore, which played the
same part in Babylonian magic as the rowan ash of
northern Europe, and which was believed to be under
the special protection of Ea ; and the parallel, therefore,
between the ash Ygg-drasii of Norse mythology and the
world-tree of the poet of Eridu becomes even closer than
before.

Long after the days when the hymns and magical
texts of Eridu were composed, the mystic virtues of the
cedar were still remembered. A tablet which describes

of the god Ta'uz. The women weep over him, (telling) how his lord
slew him, and ground his bones in a mill, and scattered them to the
winds ; and they eat nothing that has been ground in a mill, but only
soaked wheat, vetches, dates, raisins and the like" (Chwolson's Die
Ssabier, ii. p. 27).

1 W. A.I. iv. 15. Rev. 10—13. It is pretty clear from the sculp
tures that the sacred tree of the Babylonians was the cedar, which was
subsequently displaced by the paliu ; so that Hommel's view, which
sees a palm in " the stalk" of Eridu, may still be maintained. On the
other hand, in W. A. I. ii. 59. Rev. 10, "the divine Lady of Eden" is
called "the goddess of the tree of life" in the Accadian of north Baby
lonia, "the goddess of the vine" in the Sumerian of south Babylonia.
It is clear from this that the sacred tree was also conceived of as the
vine. According to the Old Testament, it will be remembered, there
were two sacred trees in the garden of Eden.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 241

the initiation of an augur, and states how he must be
" of pure lineage, unblemished in hand and foot," speaks
thus of the vision which is revealed to him before he is
" initiated and instructed in the presence of Samas and
Eimmon in the use of the book and stylus" by "the
scribe, the instructed one, who keeps the oracle of the
great gods : " he is made to descend into an artificial
imitation of the lower world, and there beholds "the
altars amid the waters, the treasures of Anu, Bel and
Ea, the tablets of the gods, the delivering of the oracle
of heaven and earth, and the cedar-tree, the beloved of
the great gods, which their hand has caused to grow."1
It was possibly the fragrance of the wood when lighted
for sacrificial purposes that gave the tree its sacred
character.

But the cedar was something more than a world-tree.
It was employed, as we have seen, in incantations and
magic rites which were intended to restore strength and
life to the human frame. It was thus essentially "a tree
of life," and the prototype and original of those conven
tional trees of life with which the walls of the Assyrian
palaces were adorned. Those who have visited the
Assyrian collection of the British Museum will remember
the curious form which it generally assumes, as well as
the figures of the two cherubs which kneel or stand before
it on either side. At times they are purely human ; at
other times they have the head of a hawk and hold a
cone — the fruit of the cedar — over the tree by whose
side they stand.

It is possible that, as time went on, another tree became

1 K 2486, Obv. 2—4. A fragment of a duplicate of this text is
published iu W. A, I. ii, 58, No. 3.

K

242 LECTUBE IV.

confounded with the original tree of life. The palm was
from the earliest period characteristic of Babylonia ; and
while its fruit seemed to be the stay and support of life,
the wine made from it made " glad the heart of man."
Date -wine was largely used, not only in Babylonian
medicine, but in the religious and magical ceremonies of
Babylonia as well. It is not at all improbable, therefore,
that the later Babylonian tree of life, with its strange
conventional form, was an amalgamation of two actual
trees, the cedar and the palm. It is even possible that
while one of them, the cedar, was primarily the sacred
tree of Eridu, the other was originally the sacred tree of
some other locality of Chaldsea.

What gives some colour to this last suggestion is, that
in later Babylonian belief the tree of life and the tree of
knowledge were one and the same. The text which
describes the initiation of a soothsayer associates the
cedar with " the treasures of Anu, Bel and Ea, the tablets
of the gods, the delivering of the oracle of heaven and
earth." It was upon the heart or core of the cedar, too,
that the name of Ea, the god of wisdom, was inscribed.
And it was wisdom rather than life, the knowledge of
the secrets of heaven and the magical arts that benefit or
injure, which the priesthood of Babylonia and the gods
they worshipped kept jealously guarded. Only the ini
tiated were allowed to taste of its fruit. In this respect,
consequently, there was a marked difference between the
belief of the Babylonians and the account which we find
in the earlier chapters of Genesis.

We can trace the first steps by which the name and
worship of Tammuz made their way from Eridu north
wards. In the same part of Babylonia, a few miles only

TAMMUZ AND ISTAE. 243

to the north, lie the mounds of Tel-loh, which have
yielded to French enterprize the earliest monuments of
Chaldsean art we as yet possess. We learn from them
that the god of Tel-loh was Nin-girsu. It was in honour
of Nin-girsu that the kings who reigned at 'Sirgulla
built and adorned their chief temples ; and in the inscrip
tion of Sukal-duggina (?) he is brought into association
with the god of Nipur and entitled " the valiant warrior
of Mul-lil." Mn-girsu was, in fact, " the lord of Girsu,"
the native name, probably, of Tel-loh. When the cult
of Mul-lil found its way to Girsu, the god of Girsu
necessarily entered into relation with him ; and as " the
lord of Girsu" seems to have been a Sun-god, he took the
place of Adar and became "the valiant warrior of Mul-
lil." It was on this account that the mythologists sub
sequently identified Adar and Nin-girsu.1 In Accad,
however, an earlier identification had been discovered, in
whose justification, it is probable, more might have been
said. After the establishment of the worship of Tammuz
in Sippara, and the introduction of the divinities of
southern Babylonia into the north, Tammuz came to be
addressed there as Mul-Mersi or En-Mersi, the Accadian
or North- Chaldsean form of Nin-girsu. In forgetfulness
of the real origin of the name, the Semitic scribes of
Sargon and his successors seem to have interpreted the
title as if it meant " lord of the horned crown," the head
dress worn by the Babylonian kings. A broken text,
which was probably the compilation of a bilingual Semite,
breaks out into these words:2 "0 Merodach, go, my

1 W.A.I, ii. 57, 74.

2 W. A. I. iv. 27, 6, completed from S 1208, which reads dkala in
stead of akali in line 17 (W. A. I. 57). Mir-6i is found in an unnum-

244 LECTURE IV.

son, take the hand of the white offspring of Mul-Mersi
(Tammuz) ; lull the plague of the sick man to rest ;
change his heart; assist the man;1 grant the spell of
Ea; the offspring of his heart whom thou hast taken
away and the strong food of the man restore (to him)."
"The white offspring of Mul-Mersi" is perhaps an
equivalent of a common phrase in these old texts : " the
man the son of his god." It represents that close
relationship which was supposed to exist between the
Babylonian and the god he worshipped, and which the
Egyptian symbolised by the assumption of an identity
between himself and the divine being. But whereas the
pantheistic Egyptian believed in his absorption into the
divinity, the pious Babylonian, who regarded his gods as
creators and generators, called himself their son.

The worship of the Sun-god of Eridu had embodied
other elements before it reached northern Babylonia,
besides those which resulted in the identification of
Tammuz and Nin-Girsu. It was probably as Mn-Girsu
that he became the patron and lord of the green marsh-
plants which flourished in the neighbourhood of Tel-loh ;
it was as Mn-girsu that he was adored as the son of Ea
the river-god, rather than of Ea the god of the deep;
and it was from the story of his untimely death that he
came to be the Nergal of southern Chaldaea, the Sun-god
of winter and night who rules, like Ehadamanthos, in the

bered bilingual fragment belonging to the series l£(0bv. 6) : bitsa mirdL
For Mul-mersi, see W. A. I. ii. 59, 8. Girsu seems to mean the " bank"
of a river. At all events, in S 1366, Obv. 3, 4, the Accadian mc-ir-si
gu id UD-KiP-NUN-Ki-LiL-raa is rendered by the Semitic ina girde set
Puratti, "on the bank of the Euphrates."

1 The Semitic is literally, "put the man into the hand ;" the Acca
dian, " take the hand of the man."

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 245

lower world. But he was more than this. The Chal
deans were a people of agriculturists and herdsmen;
their monarchs were addressed as " shepherds;" and just
as Abel in the Old Testament is "a keeper of sheep,"
so, too, Tammuz in Babylonia was accounted a shepherd.
This is how an old Accadian hymn speaks of him ( W. A. I.
iv. 27, No. 1) :

" O Tammuz, shepherd and lord, bridegroom of Istar the lady of

heaven,

lord of Hades, lord of the shepherds' cot,1

the green corn2 which in the meadow3 has not drunk the water,
its progemy in the desert is not green of leaf ;
the acacia (?) tree which in the canal is planted not,4
the acacia (?) tree whose foundation is taken away ;
the grain5 which in the meadow has not drunk the water."

The poem is written in the artificial dialect which
sprang up in the court of Sargon, and it probably ema
nated from the city of Accad.6 It may have been one
of the dirges chanted in commemoration of the death of
Tammuz, the shepherd who was cut off like the unwa-
tered corn, or the tree from beneath whose roots the
soft soil of the canal slips away.

The story of Tammuz of Eridu did not stand alone.
There were other cities of Babylonia which knew of a
hapless Sun-god cut off in the prime of his life, or perish-

1 Tul, i.e. "tel" or "mound." 2 Aram, Una.

3 Comp. Jensen, Z. f. K. ii. 16.

4 For erisu, " to be planted," see W. A. I. v. 24, 12.

5 W. A. I. ii. 33, 73, compared with v. 21, 7, 8.

6 The Accadian is Semitised and the Semitic is Accadised. Tims in
the Accadian we have timba for siba, " shepherd," the Semitic iul, and
gu from the Semitic qu ; in the Semitic, musare, a derivative from the
Accadian sar, "grass," radi, borrowed from the Accadian rat (more
correctly radii, W. A. I. ii. 38, 18), and gu instead of qa.

246 LECTURE IV.

ing through love of a heartless goddess. But in these
legends, it would appear, the goddess herself was the
cause of the hero's death; so far from venturing into
the glooms of Hades for the sake of her youthful bride
groom, it was she who had herself lured her lover to
his destruction. This was the light in which Istar was
represented at Erech, and this was the interpretation
put there upon the name of the Accadian month of the
Errand of Istar. The fate of the suitors of Istar is
glanced at in the sixth book of the Epic of Gisdhubar.

1. " For the favour of Gisdhubar the princess Istar lifted the eyes ;

2. ' (Look up), Gisdhubar, and be thou my bridegroom !

3. I am thy vine,1 thou art its bond ;

4.- be thou my husband and I will be thy wife.

5. I will give thee a chariot of crystal and gold,

6. whose pole is of gold and its horns are of glass,2

7. that thou mayst yoke (thereto) each day the mighty coursers.

8. Enter our house in the gloom of the cedar.

9. When thou enterest our house

10. let (the river) Euphrates kiss thy feet.

11. Let kings, lords (and) princes (bow) beneath thee !

12. The tribute of the mountain and the plain let them bring thee

as an offering.

13. (In the folds ?) let thy flocks bring forth twins ;

14. (in the stables) let the mule seek (its) burden;

15. let thy (horse) in the chariot be strong in galloping ;

16. let (thine ox) in the yoke have no rival.'

17. (Gisdhubar) opened his mouth and speaks,

18. (he says thus) to the princess Istar :

19. '(I will leave) to thyself thy possession,

20. (in thy realm are) corpses and corruption (?),
21 disease and famine.

[The next seven lines are too mutilated to be translated.]

29. The wind and the blast hold open the back-door (of thy palace).

30. The palace is the destroyer of heroes.

1 'Mdbi. Haupt reads inU, "fruit."

2 Elmew; see W. A. I. iv. 18, 42, and ii. 30, 42.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 247

31. A deceitful (?) mouth are its hidden recesses

32. A destructive (?) portent are its columns.

33. A girdle of dark cloth are its columns.

34. Of white stone is the construction (musab) of the stone fortress.

35. As for me, 'tis the mouth of the land of the enemy.

36. A devouring flame (?) is its lord.

37. Never may I be (thy) bridegroom for ever !

38. Never may a god make thee joyous.

39. Go, and let me tell (the story) of thy enslavements

40. of those into whose hands thou puttest no ransom.

41. To Tammuz the bridegroom (of thy youth) thou didst look ;

42. year after year with weeping didst thou cling to him.

43. Alala, the eagle, also didst thou love ;

44. thou didst strike him and break his wings ;

45; he remained in the forest ; he begged for his wings.

46. Thou didst love, too, a lion perfect in might ;

47. seven by seven didst thou tear out his teeth, seven by seven.

48. And thou didst love a horse glorious in battle ;

49. he submitted himself; with spur and whip didst thou cling to

him;

50. seven leagues didst thou cling to him galloping ;

51. in his trouble and thirst didst thou cling to him :

52. to his mother the goddess 'Silili with tears didst thou approach.

53. Thou didst love also the shepherd Tabulu,

54. who continually poured out for thee the smoke (of sacrifice).

55. Every day was he slaughtering for thee the victims ;

56. thou didst bring him forth and into a hyena didst change him ;

57. his own sheep-cote drove him away

58. and his own dogs tore his wounds.

59. Moreover, thou didst love Isullanu1 the gardener of thy father,

60. who was ever raising for thee costly trees.

61. Every day had he made bright thy dish.

62. Thou didst take from him (his) eye and didst mock him :

63. ' 0 my Isullanu, come, let us eat thine abundant store,

64. and bring out thy hand and dismiss all fear of us.*

65. Isullanu says to thee :

66. 'As for me, what dost thou ask of me *?

67. 0 my mother, thou cookest not (and) I eat not ;

1 In W. A. I. iii. 68, 23, Isullanu is called by his Accadian name of
Si-sigsig or Si-sinisim, "he who makes green the living things."

248 LECTURE IV.

68. the food I have eaten are garlands and girdles ;

69. the prison of the hurricane is (thy) hidden recess.1

70. Thou didst listen and (didst impose) punishment ;

71. thou didst strike him ; to bondage thou didst (assign him);

72. and thou raadest him sit in the midst of (a tomb ?).

73. I will not ascend the height ; I will not descend to the (depth) ;

74. and yet thou lovest me that thou (mayest make) me as they are.'

75. When Istar (heard) this,

76. Istar was enraged and (mounted up) to heaven.

77. Moreover Tstar went before Anu (her father),

78. before Anu she went and she (says) :

79. '0 my father, Gisdhubar has kept watch on me ;

80. Gisdhubar has counted my garlands,

81. my garlands and my girdles.'"

Like Potiphar's wife, Istar thus accuses Gisdhubar of
doing the exact contrary of what he really had done.
The portion of the tablet which contained the conver
sation between her and Anu is broken, but enough
remains to show that she eventually persuaded him to
punish the hero. Anu accordingly created a divine bull
of monstrous size ; but without much result, as Gisdhubar
and his friend Ea-bani succeeded in destroying the animal
and dragging its body in triumph through the streets
of Erech. "With Gisdhubar and the divine bull of Anu,
however, we are not at present interested. "What con
cerns us just now is the list given by Gisdhubar of
the unhappy victims of Istar' s coquetry. Of the first,
Tammuz, there is but little said. Even Sin-liqi-unnini,
the author of the Epic of Gisdhubar, could find but little
in the story of Tammuz which could throw discredit on
the goddess. The next mentioned is Aldla, " the eagle."
Now the eagle is stated to be " the symbol (tsalam) of
the noon-tide sun;" and that AMla, whose name is of
Accadian origin signifying "the great Spirit," has solar
connections, is indicated not only by the fact that his

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 249

consort Tillili is the sister of Tammuz in the legend of the
Descent of Istar, but also from the compound title Aldla
alam, " Alala of the image."1 In one of the local cos
mogonies of Chaldeea, however, he and his consort took
the place of Assoros and Kissare, the primordial heavens
and earth. Like them, he was resolved into Anu by the
monotheistic school ;2 and a text associates both him and
Tillili with the cosmogonic deities Lukhma and Lakhama,
" the gods who are immanent in the heaven and in the
earth."3 "Who the lion and the horse were we do not
yet know; we hear of "a god of lions" (W.A.I, iii. 66,
34), and one of the Assyrian names of the month Sebat was
"the month of 'Silili" (K 104, Rev.). In the shepherd
Tabulu, however, we have the double of the shepherd
Tammuz himself. The name reminds us of Abel and
Tubal-Kain, more especially when we remember that it
is but a tipJiel formation — so common in Assyrian — from
the simpler abalu. His fate recalls that of the hunter
Aktseon, torn by his own dogs through the anger of

1 W.A.I. ii. 54, 12.

2 W. A. I. ii. 54, 11. In W. A. I. iii. 66, 15, we have (AN) Sam-su
(AN) alam; comp. 11. 18, 20, 26.

3 D.T. 122, 17—20. Laban(?)-same, "the brick foundation of
heaven" is also mentioned in the same text. Nabonidos, when de
scribing the rebuilding of the temple of the Moon-god at Harran, says
that he set about it " by the commission (not " work," as Latrille) of
the god Laban (?), the lord of foundations and brick-work" (libndti,
W. A. I. v. 64. i. 53), and that on either side of the eastern gate of
the building he placed "two Lukhmu gods who sweep away my foes."
Laban is mentioned (W. A. I. iii. 66, 6) among the gods whose images
stood in the temple of Anu at Assur, and it is probable that he was of
foreign importation. According to Genesis, Harran was the home of
Laban. The name would mean " the white one." " The god of the
Foundation" (ur) is mentioned in 79. 7-8. 68. This was the horizon
of heaven as opposed to the zenith or Nebo.

250 LECTURE IV.

Artemis, the Asianic representative of the Babylonian
Istar. Isullanu, the gardener of Ami, is probably the
mythic prototype of the historical Sargon of Accad, whom
later legend turned into a gardener beloved by the
goddess Istar. As it was upon the famous king of Accad
that the old myth was fastened, it is possible that Isullanu
had been the representative of Tammuz at Accad before
the cult of the god of Eridu had been introduced there
from the south.

But who, all this while, was the goddess, whom one
legend made the faithful wife enduring even death for
her husband's sake, while another regarded her as the
most faithless and cruel of coquettes? I have already
spoken of her as the goddess of love, and such, indeed,
she was to the Babylonian or Assyrian of later days. In
the story of her descent into Hades, her residence in the
lower world is marked by all cessation of intercourse
between male and female in the animal creation, as well
as among the gods of heaven. It was this feature of the
story which caused it to find its way into the literature
of another people, and to survive the days when the clay
tablets of Assyria and Babylon could still be read. We
find it serving to point a moral in the pages of the
Talmud. We are there told how a pious rabbi once
prayed that the demon of lust should be bound, and how
his petition was granted. But society quickly fell into
a state of anarchy. No children were born; no eggs
even could be procured for food; and the rabbi was at
length fain to confess that his prayer had been a mistaken
one, and to ask that the demon should again be free.

But though a moral signification thus came to be read
into the old Babylonian myth, it was a signification that

TAMMTJZ AND ISTAE. 251

was originally entirely foreign to it. Prof. Tiele has
clearly shown that the legend of Istar's descent into
Hades is but a thinly-veiled description of the earth-
goddess seeking below for the hidden waters of life,
which shall cause the Sun-god and all nature with him
to rise again from their sleep of death.1 The spirits of
earth, the gnomes that guard its treasures below, watch
over the waters, and not until they are led forth and
placed on their golden throne can their precious treasure
be secured. It is the earth who loses her adornments,
one by one, as she passes slowly downward into the
palace-prison of the infernal goddess, and it is the earth
who is once more gladdened at spring-time with the
returning love of the youthful Sun-god.

Istar, then, must primitively have been the goddess
of the earth, and the bride of Tammuz at Eridu must
accordingly have been his mother Dav-kina. This alone
will explain the persistent element in the myth as it
made its way to the Greeks, according to which the
mother of Tammuz was also his sister. Istar, Tillili,
Dav-kina, were all but different names and forms of the
same divinity. We have just seen that Tillilij at all
events, was the primordial earth.

"What Istar was primitively, however, will not explain
what she became in those later ages of Babylonian history
to which our monuments belong. Her origin faded more
and more into the background • new elements entered
into her character ; and she absorbed the attributes and
functions of numberless local divinities. The Istar of
Assur-bani-pal or Nabonidos was the inheritress of cults

1 Adcs du sixieme Congres Internationale dcs Orientalises, ii. 1,
pp. 495 6^.

252 LECTURE IV.

and beliefs which had grown up in different localities
and had gathered round the persons of other deities.

The Istar of the historical period is essentially Semitic.
But let me not be misunderstood. What is Semitic in
her nature is an after-growth, which cannot be explained
unless we assume that it has grown out of non-Semitic
elements. The Semitic superstructure presupposes a
non-Semitic basis. It is only thus that we can explain
both the name of Istar and the striking difference that
exists in regard to her character between the Semites of
Babylonia and those of the west. It is only where the
Semite had come into contact with the Accadian that we
find the name and worship of Istar at all. We look in
vain for it among the Arabs of central Arabia, among
the descendants of those who parted from their Semitic
brethren of the north before they were affected by the
culture of primaeval Babylonia. We find the name of
Aththor, it is true, on the southern coast of Arabia ; but
we find there also the name of the Babylonian Moon-god
Sin, and other traces of the influence which Babylonian
trade could not fail to exert in comparatively late days.
Inland, Istar remained unknown.

All attempts to discover a Semitic etymology for the
name have been unavailing. And there is a good reason
why they should be so. The name itself bears evidence
to its non-Semitic origin. We find it in its earliest form
in Babylonia ; and here, though it denotes the name of a
female goddess, it is unprovided with that grammatical
sign of the feminine — the dental suffix — which marks
the names of other genuinely Semitic goddesses. Belit,
Zarpanit, Anat, Tasmit, all show by their termination
their source and meaning ; and Istar, without that termi-

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 253

nation, in spite of its meaning, shows equally plainly
what its source must be. As the name travelled further
to the west, away from its old associations with Chaldsea,
the grammatical instincts of the Semites could no longer
be held in check, and Istar was transformed into the
Ashtoreth of the Old Testament and the Phoenician
monuments, the Astarte of the Greeks. Even in Baby
lonia and Assyria, when Istar became the representative
of all other female divinities, and the name passed into
a common term signifying "a goddess," the Semitic
feminine suffix was attached to it. But the suffix was
attached to it only when it was thus used, no longer as
a proper name, but as one of the words of the Semitic
dictionary; whenever it still retained its ancient sense
and denoted a specific deity, it retained also its ancient
genderless appearance. As a foreign name, it continued
to the last a stranger in the province of Semitic grammar.
We can thus understand why it was that the Semites
sometimes changed the old Chaldsean goddess into a
male divinity. On the Moabite Stone, Mesha declares
that he dedicated Nebo of Israel to Istar-Kemosh, "to
Istar who is the god Kemosh;" and an astronomical
tablet1 informs us that Dilbat, the planet Venus, which,
as we shall see, was the primitive Istar, is a a female at
sunset and a male at sunrise," the word employed for
male being a curiously artificial coinage, such as " maless"
would be in English. In fact, the tablet goes on to add
that Venus was not only a male by reason of her identifica
tion with the morning star, she was also the rising Sun-god
himself, and thus " a male and the offspring (of a male);"

1 W. A. I. iii. 53. 30—39.

254 LECTURE IV.

while at sunset she was the god Adar, and thus "an
androgyne and the offspring (of an androgyne)." After
this, we are told that " Venus at sunrise is Istar of Acead
by name,'7 while at sunset she is " Istar of Erech by
name;" at sunrise she is "Istar of the stars," at sunset
lilat Hi, "the mistress of the gods." The doubt as to
whether Istar were male or female was the same as that
which was felt by the Semites in regard to other Acca-
dian deities.1 "Where there was no grammatical indica
tion, where the same word might mean "master" or
"mistress" according to the context, the zealous but
half-educated Semitic neophyte might well be forgiven
the mistakes he sometimes made in his adoption and
adaptation of the older divinities. It was thus that the
ambiguity of the Accadian nin, which signified at once
"lord" and "lady," led him at times to transform the
god Adar into a goddess; and I have already pointed
out in an earlier Lecture how in like manner the god
A became the wife of the Sun. But that a similar doubt
should hang over the sex of Istar proves more plainly
than anything else the non-Semitic origin of her name
and character.2

"When, however, we come to look closely into this
character, we shall find here also clear traces of a non-

1 In W. A. I. ii. 35, 18, we are told that the god Tiskhu was " Istar
of Erech ;" and yet in ii. 57, 35, Tiskhu appears as the equivalent of
Adar as "god of libations." But it must be remembered that the
Semites were doubtful about the sex of Adar. On the other hand,
Iskhara, another name of Istar (ii. 49, 14 ; K 4195, 7), is said to be a
male deity whose wife was Almanu or (Al)manati (Strassrnaier, 3901).

2 That the Phoenicians also knew of a male Istar is perhaps indi
cated by the Greek myth which made Europa the wife of Asterios,
the king of Phoenician Krete.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 255

Semitic descent. In the first place, Istar is distinguished
from the other goddesses of the Semitic world by her
independent nature. She is not the mere reflexion of
the male divinity, like Anat or Beltis or Zarpanit ; in so far
as she is Istar, she is placed on an equal footing with the
male deities of the pantheon. In this respect she stands
in marked contrast to the goddesses of the pure Semitic
faith, and to the purely Semitic conception of the divine
government of the world. She holds equal rank with
the Sun-god Baal ; Babylonian mythology, in fact, makes
her his sister, and treats her as if she were a god. We
may even say that she takes rank before him, at all
events in early times, in conformity with the old Accadian
custom of setting the woman before the man, but in fla
grant violation of the contrary practice of the Semitic race.
So far, indeed, from being the double and shadow of the
god, Istar is rather the divinity who gives life and sub
stance to her divine lovers. Tammuz himself is but
"the bridegroom" of Istar; it was only for the sake of
Istar that his name was held in honour. Istar, in short,
is an anomaly in the Semitic pantheon ; she is there as a
goddess who masquerades in the garb of a god.

Away from Accadian influences, in the Phoenician
lands of the west, the character, like the name, of the
goddess was more closely accommodated to Semitic ideas.
Istar had become Ashtoreth, and Ashtoreth had put on
the colourless character of the Semitic goddess. Hence
it was that, just as Baal became the common designation
of the male deity, Ashtoreth was the common designa
tion of the female. By the side of the Baalim stood the
Ashtaroth — those goddesses whose sole right to exist was
the necessity of providing the male divinity with a con-

LECTURE IV.

sort. Asherah, the southern Canaanitish goddess of fer
tility, alone retained some of the independence of the
Babylonian Istar.

In the second place, there is a very important differ
ence between the Istar of Babylonia and the Ashtoreth
of Phoenicia. Ashtoreth was the goddess of the moon ;
Istar was not. It was in the west alone that Astarte was

" Queen of heaven with crescent horns ;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs."

It was in the west alone that the shrine was erected to
Ashtoreth Karnaim,1 "Ashtoreth of the double horn;"
and Greek legend described the wandering Astarte, under
the name of Europa, crossing the celestial sea on the bull
that Anu had created for her so long before to punish
the disdainful Gisdhubar. In Babylonia and Assyria,
however, Istar and the moon were separate one from
another. The moon was conceived of as a god, not as a
goddess, in conformity with pre-Semitic ideas ; and the
Moon-god Sin was never confounded with the goddess
Istar. It must have been the same wherever the worship
of Sin extended, whether in Harran in the north or in
Yemen and the Sinaitic desert in the south. But the
worship never made its way to Canaan. Sin failed to
establish himself there, and the moon accordingly re
mained the pale mirror and double of the mightier Baal.
The Semites of Phosnicia were too distant from the cul
tured kingdoms of the Euphrates to allow their religious
instincts to be overridden and transformed. The name
and cult of Istar were indeed introduced among them,

1 Gen. xiv. 5, where the word is wrongly punctuated " Ashteroth."

TAMMUZ AND ISTAB. 257

but a new interpretation was given to both. Istar sank
to the level and took the place of the older goddesses of
the Canaanitish faith.

Perhaps you will ask me what is the meaning of the
name of Istar? This, however, is a question which I
cannot answer. The Babylonians of the historical age
do not seem to have known what was its origin, and it is
therefore quite useless for us to speculate on the subject.
Its true etymology was buried in the night of antiquity.
But its earliest application appears to have been to the
evening star. This is the oldest signification that we can
assign to the word, which by the way, it may be noticed,
does not occur in any of theAccadian texts that we
possess.1

The legend of the assault of the seven wicked spirits
upon the moon tells us pretty clearly who the goddess
Istar was primarily supposed to be. Mul-lil, it is said,
" had appointed Sin, Samas and Istar, to rule the vault of
heaven," and, " along with Anu, had given them to share
the lordship of the hosts of heaven. To the three of
them, those gods his children, he had entrusted the night
and the day ; that they cease not their work he urged
them. Then those seven, the wicked gods, darted upon
the vault of heaven; before Sin, the god of light, they
came in fierce attack ; Samas the hero and Eimmon the

1 From which we may infer that the name originated in one of the
smaller cities of the country. It is possibly a side-form of Iskhara,
Is-tar and Is-khara being alike compounds of is. The suffix -ra or -r
is common in Proto-Chaldsean, and the Semitic spelling of the first syl
lable (with 'ain), like that of the first syllable of Anu, points to its
having originally been as. Istar appears as Esther in the book of
Esther, where Mordechai, it may be noted, is a derivative from Mero-
dach.

8

258 LECTURE IV.

warrior turned and fled ; Istar set up a glittering throne
by the side of Anu the king, and plotted for the sovereignty
of heaven."1 Thus once more the mythologist gives the
goddess an unfavourable character, though it is easy to
see what the story means. When the moon is eclipsed,
the evening star has no longer any rival in the sky ; it
shines with increased brilliancy, and seems to meditate
ruling the night alone, in company only with the heaven
itself.

Already, before the days of Sargon of Accad and the
compilation of the great Babylonian work on astronomy,
it had been discovered that the evening and morning
stars were one and the same. Not only, therefore, was
Istar the evening star, the companion of the moon ; she
became also the morning star, the companion and herald
of the sun. It was thus that she assumed the attributes
and titles of a male deity, since Dun-khud-e, " the hero
who issues forth at daybreak," was both a god and the
morning star. As the morning star, therefore, Istar was
a god and the successor of a god, so that it is not won
derful if the bewildered Semite, who found no visible
sign of gender in the name of the divinity he had adopted,
should sometimes have regarded Istar as the masculine
form of Ashtoreth. Some of the early Accadian titles
of Istar belong to her as the star of the morning, though
the title of "Lady of Kising,"2 given her as "the wife

1 W.A.L iv. 5, 60—79.

2 W. A. I. ii. 54, 20. As " Lady of the dawn" she was called Bis-
bizi, a re-duplicated form, apparently, of bis or pes, which is rendered
"by mamlu (W. A. I. iv. 69, 33; 21, 66), a synonym of allallu (ii. 31, 65)
and rahdbu (ii. 35, 35). Compare pes, " a pig." Mahdbu is the Hebrew
rahab, "the crocodile" as a symbol of Egypt, and denoted in Assyrian
" a sea-monster." Hence George Smith seems to have been right in

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 259

of Aim" (W.A.I, ii. 54, 15), would apply equally to the
evening star.

In making her the wife of the Sky-god, the mytho-
logists were only expressing in another way what the
poet of the legend of the seven evil spirits had denoted
by saying that Istar set up her throne by the side of
Ann. More usually, however, the relation between Istar
and Ann was regarded as a genetic one ; she was the
daughter, rather than the wife, of the Sky.1 At times,
again, she is called the daughter of the Moon-god, the
Moon-god being here the larger body which begets the
smaller star. It is possible that these different views
about her descent are derived from different centres of
worship ; that which made her the daughter of Sin
having its origin in Ur, while that which made her the
daughter of Anu emanated from Erech. At any rate,
her connection with the Moon-god seems to have been
the more popular view in Semitic times.

As a planet, Istar's ordinary name was the Accadian
Dilbat, or " Announcer. " One of the smaller cities of
Babylonia had the same name, and was probably the chief
seat of the worship of the goddess under this particular
form. It is obvious that the name must have been
originally applied not to the evening but to the morning
star. It was only as the announcer of day and the
herald of the sun that Yenus could be the Accadian
representative of the Semitic JSTebo. The other mes-

identifying the bis-bis or "dragon" Tiamat with Rahab, since is bis-bis
is interpreted turbuMu (W. A. I. ii. 32, 9), " the locust-swarin of the
sea," according to ii. 5, 4.

1 Both at Erech and Tel-loh her temple was called E-Ana, "the
temple of the Sky."

82

260 LECTURE IV.

sengers of the gods were male ; and iu Semitic times
the fact that there had once been a female messenger
was forgotten. The name of Dilbat, it is true, remained,
but only as the name of a star ; the place of I star as the
herald of the Sun-god was taken, at Babylon at all events,
by Nebo.

It is possible that the records of the city of Dilbat, if
ever they are recovered, will show us that this was the
primal home of the name of Istar itself, and the centre
from which it first spread. If so, however, it was little
more than the primal home of the goddess's name. The
real source and centre of the worship of Istar at the dawn
of the historical period, the starting-point from which
it was handed on to the Semites and became overlaid
with Semitic beliefs and practices, was not Dilbat, but
Erech. In the days when Erech had been a leading
state, when the cult of the Sky-god had been carried by
its people to other parts of the Eastern world, the cult
of Istar also had been carried with it. Wherever the
worship of Anu had gone, the worship of Istar, the
daughter of Anu, went too. But the Istar of Erech was
originally known by a different name. She was Nana,
"the lady," a title which does not appear to have been
replaced by the name of Istar until after the beginning of
the Semitic period. At all events the common title of
the goddess in the Accadian texts is ISTdna ; the word
Istar is never found in them. As Nana,1 " the lady," she
continued to be known at Erech down to the most recent
times. It was the famous image of Nana that the Elamite

1 As the name is always written in combination with the prefix of
divinity, the compound character was called In-Nana, for An-Nana
(see above, p. 116),

TA.MMUZ AND ISTAR. 261

invader Kudur-naukhundi had carried off 1635 years
before the generals of Assur-bani-pal recovered it in the
sack of Shushan, and late texts draw a distinction between
ISTana and Istar. Thus in a tablet of exorcisms, the patient
is told to address " Istar, Nana and Kasba,"1 and an
augural, tablet is careful to distinguish between Nana and
u Istar the queen" (milkatu)?

It was, in fact, easy to identify a goddess who bore so
general a name as that of "the lady" with any other
female divinity. At Borsippa, for instance^ Nana was
made one with an otherwise unknown deity 'Sutitil (?),
" the goddess who quickens the body." A text copied for
Assur-bani-pal from a tablet originally written at Baby Ion,
contains part of a hymn which had to be recited " in the
presence of Bel-Merodach when he had seated himself
(ittasbu) in the house of sacrifice (akitum) in the beginning
of Nisan." The latter portion reads as. follows :.

" (0 Bel, why) dost thou not take thy seat in Babylon ? In E-Sag-
gil is set thy dwelling-place. ' His is the . . . .' they have not said to
thee, and Zarpanit has not cried to thee. 0 Bel, why dost thou not
take thy seat in Borsippa ? In E-Zida is set thy dwelling-place. ' O
Nebo, I am here,' they have not said to thee ; Nana the goddess who
quickens the body has not cried to thee. 0 Bel, why dost thou not
take thy seat in Kis 1 In E-Dubba (the house of libation) is set thy
dwelling-place. *0 Zamama,3 why dost thou not take thy seat?'

1 K3464, 18.

2 K 220, Obv. 4, 13. The divine names in this tablet follow in this
order : Istar of Babylon, Nana, Kani-surra, the god of Kibib, Nebo,
Tasmetu, Gula, 'Sakin of E-Ana, Samas, Sala, Istar the queen, Nergal
(Ugur), Kirnmon, Zamama, Mul-lil.

3 Zamama (in Sumerian Zagaga) was the Sun-god of Kis (W. A. I.
ii. 60, 7 ; 61, 52), and was consequently identified with Adar by the
mythologists (W. A. I. ii. 57, 70). On a contract-stone he is symbol
ized by an eagle, which is said to be " the image of the southern sun

262 LECTUltE IV.

Bahn, the queen of Kis, has not cried to thee. • 0 Eel, why dost thou
not take thy seat in Cutha ? In E-'Sulim [SIT-LAM] is set thy dwelling-
place. ' 0 Nergal (Ugur), why dost thou not take thy seat ] ' Laz
and the goddess Mamit have not said unto thee. ' 0 iny pure one,'
they have not cried unto thee."1

It will be noticed that in this hymn, while Nana has
ceased to be the special goddess of Erech and has become
the goddess of Borsippa, she is ranked with Bahu of Kis
and Laz and Mamit — that terrible "Ban" which even
the gods must obey — who presided over Cutha. Laz
disappeared almost entirety from the pantheon of later
Babylonia, and was remembered only by antiquarians,
except perhaps in Cutha itself;2 but the name of Bahu
remained better known. Bahu probably was the Gurra
of Eridu, the great mother "deep" which was the home
of the seven evil spirits,3 and represented the waters of
the abyss in their original chaotic state before they were
reduced to order by the creator Ea.4 She seems to have
been the Bohu of Genesis, the Baau of the Phceniciaa

of Kis." We gather also from. W. A. I. ii. 57, 53, that he was symbol
ised (like Alala) by the eagle.

1 Unnumbered; a few lines are quoted by Strassmaier, 6049.

2 Yet in 2 Kings xvii. 30, "the men of Cuth" are said to have
" made Nergal" only, from which we may infer that the ordinary popu
lation even of Cutha had forgotten the special name of their ancient
goddess.

3 W.A.I. iv. 15, 5.

4 Zikum and Zigarum or Zikiira are the names of Gurra when
regarded as the whole body of chaos out of which the heaven and the
earth were formed (W. A. I. ii. 48. 26, 27). Zigarum or Zikiira stands
for Zi-Giira, " the spirit of Gtira." Cp. Gen. i. 2. If the king of
Telloh whose name reads Ur-Bahu is to be identified with the well-
known Chaldaaan monarch Ur-Bagas or Ur-Zikum, the identity of Bahu
and Zikum would be certain. Bahu is of Semitic origin, but was bor
rowed by the Accadians at an early period.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR 263

Sanchnniathon, whose Greek interpreter identifies her
with the night and makes her the mother of the first
mortal men. The Semitic Bohu, however, was no deity,
much less a goddess; the word signified merely " empti
ness," and was thus a quite unsuitable rendering of the
old Accadian Gurra, " the watery deep." There is little
reason for wonder, therefore, that the recollection of
what Bahu had primitively been should have faded out
of the memories of the Semitic Babylonians. As the
gods of the Accadians had become Baalim, so Bahu, like
the other goddesses of primaeval Chaldsea, was swept
into the common vortex of Ashtaroth. She became
the wife of the Sun-god of Kis (W. A. I. iii. 68, 63), and,
when he was identified with the Sun-god of Nipur, of
Adar also (K 133, 21). She thus passed into Gula, " the
great goddess," who, though carefully distinguished from
both Bahu and Nana in the earlier texts, ended in the
Semitic period by becoming confounded with both. She
was originally the local goddess of Ms in,1 and had the
titles of "lady of the evening," "lady of the house of
death," "lady of life and death." In one of the prayers
prescribed for recitation in the temple of Merodach at
Babylon, she is invoked as " the mother who has begotten
the black-headed race (of Accadians)." She thus takes
the place that is occupied by Istar in the story of the
Deluge, who is there made to declare that "I have
begotten my people," and is called Eubat, the Assyrian
equivalent of the Accadian Gula. In fact, it is pretty
clear from the local titles of Gula that she must once
have been the evening star ; and we can therefore under-

1 W. A. I. ii. 67, 31.

264 LECTURE IV.

stand why it is that on the one hand she is termed "the
wife of the southern sun," l and on the other hand is made
the consort of Adar by the mythologists. She forms the
common meeting -point of the various local deities of
Chaldaea who were connected with the Sun-god ; Balm,
A, Sala, all alike are Gula, " the great one ;" and Gula is
but the Accadian original of Eubat, the Semitic Istar.
In this way we may explain the statement that Gula is
" the heaven" (W. A. I. v. 31, 58), the sky of the evening
which was ruled by the evening star.

But it is also quite possible that, as Hommel thinks,
one of the elements which went to make up the character
of the later Istar was a goddess of the sky who corre
sponded to the Sky-god of Erech. If so, this might well
have been Gula, whose assimilation to Istar would have
been assisted by the close relation existing between Anu
and Nana. However that may be, the Istar of the
Semitic period inherited the attributes of Dav-kina, the
goddess of the earth. The bride of Tammuz of Eridu
was not the Istar of Erech, not the Istar of the evening
star, but a goddess of the earth. At Eridu, the goddess
of the earth was Dav-kina, his own mother, and we can
thus trace to its primitive home those forms of the myth
of Adonis which made his mother his sister as well. In
Cyprus, the Phoenicians called him Gingras, and declared
that Kinyras was his father's name. Kinyras, however,
is but a popular perversion of Gingras, slightly changed
in pronunciation so as to remind the speaker of the
Phoenician Jcinnor, "the zither," just as Kenkhreis, the
wife of Kinyras, is again but Gingras in an Hellenised

l W. A. I. i. 70. 4, 5.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAE. 265

form. "Now the title of Gingras seems to bear the marks
of its origin upon its face. It is the old Accadian
Gingiri, or Gingira, which we are told was the Accadian
name of Istar.1 Gingiri, however, meant nothing more
specific than " goddess." It was the feminine equivalent
of the masculine dingir, and, like dingir, signified " creator."
The "great" goddess of southern Babylonia was thus
the creator of the world just as much as the god who
stood by her side.

The identification of Istar and Gingira simplified the
process whereby the worship of the goddess spread through
Babylonia. Each city had its own Gingira, or "creatress ;"
each city, therefore, gave a welcome to its own Istar.
When the empire of Sargon had transported the deities
of southern Chaldeea to Accad, Istar naturally accom
panied her bridegroom Tammuz. Whether the Semitic
colouring which the worship of Istar received was given
to it now for the first time at Accad, or whether it had
already been received at Erech, we have no means of
determining. The fact remains that from henceforth
Istar became a Semitic goddess ; her cult was almost

1 W. A. I. ii. 48, 29. The ideographs of which it is a gloss read
Sar-sar, a name of Ea, according to ii. 55, 54. Perhaps therefore we
should look to Eridu as the source of the name, where Ea and Dav-
kina would be grouped together as " the gods Sar-sar," corresponding
to the An-sar and Ki-sar of another system of cosmogony. However,
the words explained in the portion of the text which gives the gloss
Gingira seem to belong to a document that emanated from the court of
Sargon of Accad ; see 11. 40, 47, and the astronomical notices. In the
early Accadian inscriptions Gingira has the more correct form Gingiri
(written GiNGi-n). The mode of writing the name proved very con
venient for the Semites, who regarded it as expressing their Ista-ri
(instead of Istar or Istaru), as well as for the people of Van in after
times, who employed it to denote the name of their own goddess 'Sari
(instead of 'Saris). See also above, p. 143.

266 LECTURE IV.

purely Semitic in character, and the two great centres of
her worship were the Semitic cities of Erech and Accad.
Her worship was a reflexion of that worship of nature
which underlay the Semitic conception of Baalism. The
fierce passions excited by an Eastern sun found their
expression in it. Prostitution became a religious duty,
whose wages were consecrated to the goddess of love.
She was served by eunuchs and by trains of men and
boys who dressed like women and gave themselves up to
women's pursuits. Istar, in fact, had ceased to be the
"pure" goddess of the evening star. The other elements
in her hybrid character had come to the front, aided by
the Semitic conception of the female side of the divinity.
She was now the fruitful goddess of the earth, teeming
with fertility, the feminine development of the life-giving
Sun-god, the patroness of love. The worshipper who
would serve her truly had to share with her her pains
and pleasures. Only thus could he live the divine life,
and be, as it were, united with the deity. It was on this
account that the women wept with Istar each year over
the fatal wound of Tammuz ; it was on this account that
her temples were filled with the victims of sexual passion
and religious frenzy, and that her festivals were scenes
of consecrated orgies. As the worship of the goddess
spread westward, the revolting features connected with
it spread at the same time. The prophets of Israel
denounce the abominations committed in honour of Ash-
toreth and Baal within the sacred walls of Jerusalem
itself ; the Greek writers stand aghast at the violations
of social decency enjoined as religious duties on the
adorers of the oriental Aphrodite ; and Lucian himself
- — if Lucian indeed be the author of the treatise — is

TAMMUZ AND JSTAK. 2G7

shocked at the self-mutilation practised before tlie altar
of the Syrian goddess of Hierapolis. From Syria, the
cult, with all its rites, made its way, like that of Attys-
Adonis, to the populations beyond the Taurus. At
Komana in Kappadokia, the goddess Ma was ministered
to by 6000 eunuch-priests, and the Galli of Phrygia
rivalled the priests of Baal and Ashtoreth in cutting
their arms with, knives, in scourging their backs, and in
piercing their flesh with darts. The worship of the
fierce powers of nature, at once life-giving and death-
dealing, which required from the believer a sympathetic
participation in the sufferings and pleasures of his deities,
produced alternate outbursts of frenzied self-torture and
frenzied lust.

There was, however, a gentler side to the worship of
Istar. The cult of a goddess who watched over the
family bond and whose help was ever assured to the
faithful in his trouble, could not but exercise a human
ising influence, however much that influence may have
been sullied by the excesses of the popular religion.
But there were many whose higher and finer natures
were affected only by the humanising influence and not
by the popular faith. Babylonia does not seem to have
produced any class of men like the Israelitish prophets ;
but it produced cultivated scribes and thinkers, who sought
and found beneath the superstitions of their countrymen
a purer religion and a more abiding form of faith. Istar
was to them a divine " mother," the goddess who had
begotten mankind, and who cared for their welfare with
a mother's love. It is true that they seem to have pre
ferred addressing her by some other name than that
which was polluted by the Galli and their female com-

268 LECTURE IV.

rades ; it was to Gula, rather than to Istar or Rubat, that
the priest of Bel was told to pray ; and the translators of
the penitential psalms turn the Nana (Innana) of the
Accadian original into istaritu, "the goddess," instead of
Istar. But if questioned, they would have said that the
goddess to whom their petitions and praises were addressed
was indeed Istar, and that Gula and Nana and Milkat
were but various names under which the same deity was
adored. The people, it is true, may have regarded the
goddesses of Babylonia as separate divinities, even as the
peasant of Spain or Italy may to-day regard his local
Virgins as distinct each one from the other ; the educated
Babylonian knew them to be but one — divers forms of
the godhead, but no more. In fact, he did not scruple
to translate by the common name of Istar the several
names under which the chief goddess of Babylonia went
in the old Accadian hymns. It is thus that we read in
one of these :

"The light of heaven, who blazeth like the fire, art thou,
0 goddess (istarituiri), when thou fixest thy dwelling-place in the

earth ;

thou who art strong as the earth !
Thee, the path of justice approaches thee
when thou enterest into the house of man.
A hyaena, who springs to seize the lamb, art thou !
A lion, who stalks in the midst, art thou !
By day, 0 virgin, adorn the heaven !
O virgin Istar, adorn the heaven !

Thou who art set as the jewelled circlet of moonstone1 adorn the
heaven !

1 Suit, from the Accadian suha, the Assyrian equivalent of which was
(aban) yarakhu (W. A. I. ii. 40, 59). In the legend of the Descent of
Istar (p. 227) the sutartum or "jewelled circlet" belongs to Tillili, and
is composed of "eye-stones." The Suba was the name of a god (ii. 58, 46),

TAMMUZ AND ISTAK. 269

Companion of the Sun-god, adorn the heaven !

*To cause enlightenment to prevail1 am I appointed, alone2 am I

appointed.
By the side of my father the Moon-god3 to cause enlightenment

to prevail am I appointed, alone am I appointed.
13y the side of my brother the Sun-god to cause enlightenment

to pievail am I appointed, alone am I appointed.
My father Nannaru has appointed me ; to cause enlightenment to

prevail am I appointed.
In the resplendent heaven to cause enlightenment to prevail am I

appointed, alone am I appointed.

In the beginning was my glory, in the beginning was my glory.
lu the beginning was I a goddess (istaritum) who marched on

high.

Istar4 the divinity of the evening sky am I.
Istar the divinity of the dawn am I.
Istar the opener of the bolts of the bright heaven is my (name of)

glory.

My glory extinguishes the heaven, it spoils the earth.
The extinguisher of the heaven, the spoiler of the earth is my

glory.

That which glows in the clouds of heaven, whose name is re
nowned in the world, is my glory.

As queen5 of heaven above and below may my glory be addressed.
My glory sweeps6 away the mountains altogether.

and of a river which was consecrated to Tammuz (ii. 50, 12). As the
god Suba is stated to be a form of the Sun-god, like Ilba, he is doubt
less to be identified with Tammuz as "god of the Moon-stone."

1 In the Accadian, "the gift of light."

2 Gitmalu. The word has no connection with gamdlu, " to finish,"
and means "sole," "unique" (as here, where the Accadian equivalent
signifies "going alone"). The statement in W.A.I, iv. 69, 76, that
gitmalu is the Accadian sar, " big," is derived from the secondary sense
of gitmalu as "monstrous" or "gigantic."

3 Mistranslated in the Assyrian, which has wrongly construed the
Accadian postpositions.

4 In the original Accadian, " mistress of the sky."

5 In the original, " the unique monster" (iisugal).

6 The Assyrian translation misreudersi ; " I sweep away."

270 LECTURE IV.

Thou art1 the mighty fortress of the mountains, thou art their
mighty bolt, 0 my glory.'

May thy heart rest, may thy liver bo tranquil.2

O lord (Bel) Anu the mighty one, may thy heart be at rest.

O lord (Bel), the mighty mountain Mul-lil, may thy liver bo tran
quil.

O goddess (istaritum}> lady of heaven, may thy heart be at rest.

0 mistress, lady of heaven, may thy liver be tranquil.

O mistress, lady of E-Ana, may thy heart be at rest.

O mistress, lady of the land of Erech, may thy liver be tranquil.

0 mistress, lady of the land of the city of precious stones,3 may
thy heart be at rest.

O mistress, lady of the mountain of mankind,4 may thy liver be
tranquil.

O mistress, lady of the temple of the pasturage of mankind, may
thy heart be at rest.

0 mistress, lady of Babylon, may thy liver be tranquil.

0 mistress, lady of the name of Nana, may thy heart be at rest.

O lady of the temple, lady of spirits, may thy liver be tranquil.

(COLOPHON.) — Tearful supplication of the heart to Istar.

Like its old copy written and published. Palace of Assur-bani-
pal, king of Assyria."

But Istar was not merely the goddess of love. By the
side of the amorous goddess there was also a warlike one.
The Syrian goddess who migrated westward was a war-

1 The Assyrian mistranslates : " I am."

2 The concluding litany probably belongs to a later period than the
rest of the hymn, to which it has been attached, and is of the age when
Erech and Babylon were the leading cities of Chaldaea.

3 "The city of Sula." "The river of Sula" is called "the river of
Tammuz" or of Suba in W. A. I. ii. 50, 12.

4 Kharsag-kalama, the name of a temple at Kis (W. A. I. ii. 61, 15),
or 'Sabu (v. 12. 49, 50), also called Jcapar ri'i, "the village of the
shepherd," or kapar garradi, "the village of the warrior" Taminuz (ii.
52. 66, 67).

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 271

rior as well as a bride. Among the Hittites and their
disciples in Asia Minor, she was served not only by Galli,
but by Amazons — warrior priestesses — as well. The
Artemis of Ephesos, her lineal descendant, was separated
by a wide gulf from the Aphrodite of Cyprus. Both
Artemis and Aphrodite were alike the offspring of the
same Babylonian deity, but in making their way to Greece
they had become separated and diverse. The goddess
of the Hittites and of Asia Minor preserved mainly her
fiercer side ; the goddess of Phoenician Cyprus her gen
tler side. Both sides, however, had once been united in
the Istar of Chaldsea. The Greek myths which recounted
the story of Semiramis recorded the fact. For Semiramis
is but Istar in another guise. As Istar was called " queen"
by the Assyrians, so is Semiramis the queen of Assyria ;
as Semiramis deserts Menon for Ninos or Nineveh, so
did Istar desert her old haunts for her later temple at
Nineveh. The dove into which Semiramis was changed
was the bird sacred to Istar. Her passion for her son
Ninyas, "the Ninevite," whom another version of the
myth names Zames or Samas, is an echo of the passion
of Istar, the Dav-kina of Eridu, for Tammuz the Sun-
god. The warrior-queen of Assyria, in fact, was the
great Babylonian goddess in her martial character.

While the gentler-mannered Babylonians preferred to
dwell upon the softer side of Istar, the Assyrians, as was
natural in the case of a military nation, saw in her mainly
the goddess of war and battle. Like Babylonia, with its
two centres of her worship at Erech and Accad, Assyria
also had its two great sanctuaries of Istar at Nineveh and
Arbela. That she should have had no famous temple in

272 LECTURE IV.

Assur,1 the old capital of the kingdom, shows clearly the
comparatively late development of her cult. Doubtless
the earliest inhabitants of the Assyrian cities had brought
with them the name and worship of Istar, but it could
only have been long afterwards that it attained its final
celebrity. Indeed, we can trace its progress through the
historical inscriptions until it culminates in the reign of
Assur-bani-pal.

There was a particular cause for this gradual develop
ment which was connected with the warlike attributes
of the Assyrian Istar. The Assyrians were an essen
tially Semitic people. Their supreme goddess accordingly
was that vague and colourless Bilit ili, " the mistress of
the gods," who sat as a queenly shadow by the side of
Bel. They had none of those associations with the
older Accadian goddesses, with their specific names and
functions, which the natives of the Babylonian cities
possessed ; apart from Istar, the evening star, there was
no goddess among them who could claim a more Inde
pendent position than that of a Bilit ili. Assur himself
had no special consort, like Zarpanit at Babylon or even
A at Accad.2 Except Istar, therefore, the Assyrian pan
theon was destitute of a goddess who could assert her
equality with the gods.

But the name of Istar, supported as it was by the

1 Tiglath-Pileser I. speaks of building one there along with temples
of Martu and of Bel-labaru, "the old Bel" (Col. vi. 86, 87). He gives
Istar the title of Assuriti, "Assyrian," not "Assurite."

2 Tiglath-Pileser III. once mentions Seruha apparently as the con
sort of Assur (Lay. 17, 15), but this is in connection with his occupa
tion of Babylonia.

TAMMTJZ AND ISTAR. 273

traditions, the sacred teaching and the literature the
Assyrians had brought from Babylonia, sufficed to keep
alive a recollection of the fact that such female divinities
had once been recognised. Accordingly, while Istar on
the one hand tended to be merged into the vague and
general Bilat ili, on the other hand she absorbed their
attributes into herself. With the increasing fame of her
shrines at Mneveh and Arbela, and the rise of Nineveh
as the capital of the country, the second process went on
rapidly. Istar, therefore, while still preserving her indi
viduality, took upon herself all the offices and attributes
of Beltis, the wife of the Sun-god. The ancient myths
which had made her the bride of Tammuz and Alala,

A

and her identification with A in Semitic Accad, had
already paved the way. It was thus that the fiercer
aspect of the Sun-god as a warrior, first reflected on his
consort, the Bilat ili, became transferred to the Assyrian
Istar. Istar of Arbela was primarily a militant deity,
the bearer of the bow of war. If the Assyrians were
to have a goddess at all, a deity with an independent
character and position of her own, it was necessary that
she should be a goddess of war. The earlier kings of
Assyria, Eimmon-nirari I.,Tiglath-Pileser I., Assur-natsir-
pal and his son Shalmaneser II., pay her but slight atten
tion, invoking her only at the end of their list of gods ;
and when they address her, it is as " the lady of onset,
the strengthener of battle," " the lady of battle and war,"
"the chief tainess of heaven and earth who makes perfect
the face of the warriors." Even Sargon and Sennacherib
are chary of their references to her; while Tiglath-
Pileser III. in Babylonia sacrifices to Nana of Erech

T

274 LECTURE IV.

rather than to Istar,1 and Shalmaneser II. distinguishes
between the military goddess Istar and Beltis (Mn-lil),
"the wife of Bel, the mother of the (great) gods." But
with Esar-haddon all is changed Oracles of encourage
ment and prophecies of victory pour in for him from the
priestesses and priests of the temple of Istar at Arbela ;
Istar declares herself to be his mistress, " who will do
battle with the enemies before (his) feet." She promises
to give his foes into his hand : u Fear not, 0 Esar-had
don," is the prophecy delivered through the mouth of
the priestess Baya, "I am thy strong Baal, I devise the
might2 of thy heart: I am jealous3 as thy mother, for
thou hast given me power; the sixty great gods, my
strong ones, shall protect thee ; the Moon-god shall be
on thy right hand, the Sun-god on thy left." Another
oracle is even more explicit :

" I am Istar of Arbela, O Esar-haddon, king of Assyria ; in Assur, in
(Nineveh), in Calah, in Arbela, long days and everlasting years will I
give to Esar-haddon my king. I am the lover of thy limbs,4 thy nurse
and (thy guardian) am I. For long days and everlasting years thy
throne I have established in earth arid heaven the mighty. For my
veil of gold in the midst of heaven I am jealous. I will cause the
light which clings to it to shine before the face of Esar-haddon, king
of Assyria, like the crown of my head, (and) behind his feet. Fear
not, 0 king, I have spoken with thee, I have not withheld myself (?)

1 Similarly Sennacherib (W. A. I. i. 43, 31—33) speaks of "the
Sun-god of Larsa, the Lady of Eub-esi (?), the Lady of Erech Nairn,
the goddess Utsura-amatsa, the Lady of Life, the god Kasdinnam, the
goddess Kassitu, and Nergal." Kassitu probably means " the Kassite"
or Kosssean goddess ; in Kasdinnam we may see an Aramaean form of
the Biblical Kasdim.

2 Literally, " strong beams of wood."

3 AWiaridi, akin to Jchardatu, " solicitude."

4 " Testicles," according to Haupt.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 275

(from thee). (Thy) foeman shall cease to be. The river, in despite of
opposition, I will cause thee to cross. 0 Esar-haddon, the faithful son,
son of Beltis, .... with my hands do I make an end of thy foes."

Assur-bani-pal inherited his father's devotion to Istar,
as well as her care and protection. It was, however,
upon Istar of Mneveh, "the queen of Kidmur,"1 rather
than upon Istar of Arbela, that his attention was more par
ticularly bestowed. Nineveh was for him "the supreme
city of Istar," and it was " by the command of Assur and
Istar" that his wars were undertaken, and by their help
that they were crowned with success. When Teumman
of Elam threatened the empire with invasion, he went
into the temple of the goddess, and, like Hezekiah when
he received the letter of Sennacherib, knelt there at the
feet of his deity, and laid before her the scornful message
of the Elamite king The whole passage in which Assur-
bani-pal describes his conduct at this moment of danger
is a striking parallel to what we read in the Old Testa
ment concerning the Jewish monarch.

"When Teumman," says Assur-bani pal, "strengthened himself in
Elam, in the assembly of his forces, I looked to Istar who looks on me.
I obeyed not the command of his rebellious mouth, I surrendered nob
the fugitives (he had demanded). Teumman devised evil, (and) the
Moon-god devised for him omens of evil ; in the month Tammuz, an
eclipse during the morning watch obscured the lord of light and the
sun was darkened ; and as he rested, so too did I rest for three days,
that the regnal years of the king of Elam might be ended and his
country destroyed. (Thus did) the Moon-god (give) me his command,

which may not be altered In the month Ab, the month of the

appearance of the star of the Bow, the festival of the glorious queen
the daughter of Bel (Mul-lil), in order to worship her, the great (god
dess), I stayed in Arbela, the chosen city of her heart. Of the invasion

1 Also written Kidimuri, K 11, 35. It was the name of the part of
the palace set apart for the royal harem.

T2

276 LECTURE IV.

of the Elamite, who marched godlessly, they reported to me as follows :
1 Teuminan says thus and thus of Istar,' and they reported the tenor of
his message that he would not depart until he had gone against Assur-
bani-pal to make war. On account of this threat which Teumman had
uttered, I prayed to the exalted one, Istar ; I wept before her, I bowed
beneath her, I did honour to her divinity, (and) she came with favour
to me. * 0 lady of Arbela,' I prayed, ' I am Assur-bani-pal, the creation
of thy hands (and the creation of Assur), the father who created thee,
that I might restore the shrines of Assyria and complete the fortresses

of Accad I seek after thy courts, I go to worship (thy divinity) ;

and now he, Teumman, king of Elam, who values not the gods, has
come up to (make war). Thou art the lady of ladies, the terror of
conflict, the lady of war, the queen of the gods, . . . who in the presence
of Assur, the father that created thee, utterest blessings. In the ....
he hath desired me .... to make glad the heart of Assur and to give

rest to the liver of Merodach As for Teumman, king of Elam,

who has sinned (grievously) against Assur (the king of the gods), the
father that created thee, and against Merodach thy brother and com
panion .... and (against) me, Assur-bani-pal, whom (thou hast desired)
to give rest to the heart of Assur and (Merodach), he has gathered his
army, has made ready for war, has asked his soldiers to march to
Assyria ; do thou that art the archer of the gods, strike him down like
a weight in the midst of the battle, and smite him as a tempest of evil
wind.' My lamentable supplication did Istar hear, and ' Fear not,' she
said ; she caused me to overflow with (joy of) heart : ' For the lifting
up of thy hands which thou hast lifted up, for thine eyes (that) are
filled with tears, I have compassion.' In that very hour of the night
when I prayed to her, a certain seer slept, and he dreams a prophetic (1)
dream. A revelation during the night Istar revealed to him (which)
he repeated to me thus: 'Istar who dwells in Arbela entered, and
right and left was a quiver uplifted. She held a bow in her hand ; she
drew a heavy falchion to make war ; her countenance was wrathful.
Like a fond mother she speaks with thee, she cries to thee. Istar, the
exalted of the gods, appoints thee this message : ' Thou entreatest to
gain victory; the place lies before thee; I am coming!' Thou shalt
answer her thus : To the place to which thou goest with thee let me
go ! The lady of ladies even she declares to thee thus : I will defend
thee that thou mayest dwell in the sacred precincts of Nebo : l eat food,
drink wine, keep festival, glorify my divinity ; when I have gone, this

See W. A. I. ii. 29, 18. The library of Kouyunjik seems intended.

TAMMUZ AND ISTAR. 277

message shall be accomplished. I will cause the desire of thy heart to
prevail ; thy face shall not grow pale, thy feet shall not stumhle, thy
beauty (?) shall not fade. In the midst of battle, in her kindly womb
she embosoms thee and embraces thee on every side. Before her a fire
is kindled (fiercely) to overcome thy foes."1

Istar is here represented in human form, with a quiver
on either shoulder and a bow in the hand. This, in
fact, is the ordinary fashion in which Assyrian art por
trayed the warlike goddess. But Assyrian art was not
peculiar in thus depicting the goddess of love and war.
In the older art of Babylonia, of which that of Assyria
was but a modification, the deities of the popular faith
were all represented in human shape. The oldest cylin
ders of Semitic Chaldeea agree in this respect with the
bas-reliefs of the palaces of Nineveh. It is only the
demons and inferior spirits, or mythical personages like
Ea-bani, the friend of Gisdhubar, who are portrayed as
animals, or as composite figures partly human and partly
bestial. Ea alone, in his character of "god of life,"2 is
given the fish's skin, and even then the skin is but thrown
over his back like a priestly clcak. The composite mon
sters, whose forms Berossos saw painted on the walls of
the temple of Belos, were the brood of chaos, not of the
present order of the world. The legend of the creation
preserved by the priests of Cutha declares that the crea
tures, half men and half birds, which were depicted in
sacred art, were suckled by Tiamat, the dragon -like
personification of anarchy and chaos. Their disappear
ance marked the victory of light over darkness, of the
gods of heaven over the Titanic monsters of an extinct

1 G. Smith's Assur-bani-pal, pp. 117 — 126.

2 On an early cylinder in the British Museum.

278 LECTURE IV.

age. The deities of Babylonia were emphatically human ;
human in character and human in form. They stood in
marked contrast to the animal-headed gods of Egypt,
and harmonised with the Semitic belief that made the
deity the father of the human race, who had created man
in his own image. Even in pre-Semitic days, Chaldeean
art had already followed the same line of thought, and
had depicted its divinities in the likeness of men ; but
in pre-Semitic days this was a tendency only; it was
not until the Accadian came in contact with the Semite
that he felt the full force of the Semitic conception, and
allowed his ancient deities of light and life to take per
manently upon them the human shape.1

For there are many indications that it had not always
been so. The very fact that the divine beings who in
the Semitic era were relegated to the realms of chaos or
the inferior world of subordinate spirits, were to the last
represented as partly bestial in form, proves pretty clearly
that the Babylonians had once seen nothing derogatory
to the divine nature in such a mode of representation.

1 The fact that the gods of Babylonia were represented in human
form leads us to expect to find also the converse fact, the apotheosis of
men. Our expectation is fulfilled, at any rate as regards the earlier
period of Semitic Babylonia. A haematite cylinder, found by Gen. di
Cesnola in Cyprus, gives Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon, the invader of
the island, the title of god, and on the bricks of Amar-Agu or Buru-Sin
of Ur (W. A. I. i. 5, xix.) the divine title is prefixed to the royal name.
It is significant that this deification of the monarch is coeval with the
rise of Semitic supremacy, and that it never took firm hold of the reli
gious faith of the people. At all events, there is no trace of it from
the time of Kharninuragas downwards. It is true that the Kassite
sovereign Agu-kak-rime (cir. B.C. 1630) claims to be descended from
the god Sugamuna (W. A. I. v. 33. i. 4); but Agu-kak-rime was neither
a Semite nor a Sumerian, and to claim descent from a god is not the
same as claiming to be a god oneself.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEAIISM. 279

The winged bulls who guarded the approach to the
temple and protected it from the invasion of evil spirits,
or the eagle-headed cherubs who knelt on either side of
the sacred tree, were survivals of a time when " the great
gods of heaven and earth" were themselves imaged and
adored in similar form. The same evidence is borne by
the animals on whose backs the anthropomorphic deities
are depicted as standing in later art. When the gods
had become human, there was no other place left for the
animals with whom they had once been so intimately
connected. The evidence, however, is not borne by art
alone. The written texts aver that the gods were sym
bolised by animals, like the Sun-god of Kis, whose
" image" or symbol was the eagle. It is these symbols
which appear on the Babylonian boundary-stones, where
in the infancy of Assyrian research they were supposed
to represent the Zodiacal signs.

That they were originally something more than mere
symbols is expressly indicated in the myths about the
goddess of love. Gisdhubar taunts her with her treat
ment, not only of Alala, the eagle, but also of the horse
and the lion, whose names are not given to us. Here, at
any rate, popular tradition has preserved a recollection of
the time when the gods of Babylonia were still regarded
as eagles and horses and lions. We are taken back to
an epoch of totemism, when the tribes and cities of
Chaldsea had each its totem, or sacred animal, to whom
it offered divine worship, and who eventually became its
creator-god. Not less clear is the legend of the first
introduction of culture into the valley of the Euphrates.
Cannes, or Ea, it was ever remembered, had the body of
a fish, and, like a fish, he sank each night into the waters

280 LECTURE IV.

of the Persian Gulf when the day was closed which he
had spent among his favoured disciples of Eridu. The
culture-god himself had once been a totem, from which
we may infer how long it was before totemism disap
peared, at all events from southern Babylonia, where
the contact with Semitic thought was less strong and
abiding than was the case further north.

"We can learn a good deal about this totemism from the
old ideographic representations of the names of the chief
deities. They are like fossils, embodying the beliefs of
a period which had long passed away at the date of the
earliest monuments that have come down to us. The
name of Ea himself affords us an example of what we
may find. It is sometimes expressed by an ideograph
which signifies literally " an antelope" (dam in Accadian,
turaJchu in Assyrian, whence perhaps the Biblical name
of Terah).1 Thus we are told that Ea was called "the
antelope of the deep," "the antelope the creator," "the
antelope the prince," "the lusty antelope;"2 and the
"ship" or ark of Ea in which his image was carried at
festivals was entitled "the ship of the divine antelope of
the deep." 3 We should, indeed, have expected that the
animal of Ea would have been the fish rather than the
antelope, and the fact that it is not so points to the con
clusion that the culture-god of southern Babylonia was
an amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine

1 Turakhu is the Arabic arkhu, " an antelope," and is a tiphel form
ation from the Assyrian verb ardkhu, " to run quickly." The word
has no connection with the Accadian dam. Friedrich Delitzsch long
ago suggested that it represented the Biblical Terah (Assyrische Studien,
i. p. 51).

2 W. A. I. ii. 55, 27—30, 8 W. A. I. ii. 02, 39.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEM IS2I. 281

antelope, and the other the divine fish. Perhaps it was
originally as the god of the river that Ea had been adored
under the form of the wild beast of the Eden or desert.

There was yet another animal with which the name of
Ea had been associated. This was the serpent. The
Euphrates in its southern course bore names in the early
inscriptions which distinctly connect the serpent with Ea
on the one hand, and the goddess Innina on the other.
It was not only called "the river of the great deep" —
a term which implied that it was a prolongation of the
Persian Gulf and the encircling ocean; it was further
named the river of the sulur Ulli, " the shepherd's hut
of the lillu" or "spirit," "the river of Innina," "the
river of the snake," and "the river of the girdle of the
great god."1 In-nina is but another form of Innana or
Nana, and we may see in her at once the Istar of Eridu
and the female correlative of Aniina. Among the chief
deities reverenced by the rulers of Tel-loh was one whose
name is expressed by the ideographs of "fish" and "en
closure," which served in later days to denote the name
of Nina or Nineveh. It seems clear, therefore, that the
pronunciation of Nina was attached to it ; and Dr. Oppert
may accordingly be right in thus reading the name of
the goddess as she appears on the monuments of Tel-loh.
Nina, consequently, is both the fish -goddess and the
divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the
snake.2 Now Nina was the daughter of Ea, her eldest

1 W. A. I. ii. 51, 45—49.

2 In W. A. I. iv. 1. 33, 38, In-nana is mentioned along with Nina,
but, as Hommel has already pointed out (VorsemitischeKulturen^. 360),
this magical text includes older and newer elements, the mention of
In-nana belonging to the later portion of the text.

282 LECTURE IV.

daughter being described in a text of Tel-loh as " the lady
of the city of Mar," the modern Tel Id, according to
Hommel, where Dungi built her a temple which he called
" the house of the jewelled circlet" (sutartu). This latter
epithet recalls to us the Tillili of the Tammuz legend as
well as the Istar of later Babylonia. In fact, it is pretty
clear that Nina, " the lady," must have been that primi
tive Istar of Eridu and its neighbourhood who mourned
like Tillili the death of Tammuz, and whose title was
but a dialectic variation of that of iNana given to her at
Erech.

After this, it is not difficult to disentangle the primitive
relation that existed between the totems of the antelope,
the fish and the serpent, at Eridu. Ea was the antelope
as god of the river ; as god of the deep he was Cannes
the fish. His daughter was denoted by a compound
ideograph which represented her birth from the residence
of the fish-god, though she was herself one of the poisonous
reptiles that swarmed in the marshes at the mouth of the
Euphrates. It was in this way that the serpent became
connected with the god of wisdom, "more subtil than
any beast of the field" which had been created in the
land of Edina.

It is now possible to explain the allusions in an old
Accadian poem, in which Merodach (?) is made to describe
his weapon of war. After comparing it with "the fish
of seven fins," he goes on to say: "The tempest (mdtu)
of battle, my weapon of fifty heads (I bear), which like
the great serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven
heads, which like the strong serpent of the sea (sweeps
away) the foe."1 Here the serpent is regarded as essen-

1 W.A.I, ii. 19, 11—18.

!

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 283

tially a serpent of the sea, and in its seven heads we may
see the primitive conception of its divine power. The
" evil spirits " were seven in number also, like the spirits
of the earth , and the mythical fish which may be the
totem of the fish-god is provided with seven fins.1 The
destructive character of the great serpent is naturally
insisted on. Doubtless the serpent-god of the primitive
Sumerian was morally of a negative nature, or else
regarded as injuring only his enemies, while he did good
to those who propitiated him. But this early serpent-
worship faded away with the transformation of the totem
into an anthropomorphic deity. The goddess Nina ceased
to retain her serpentile attributes, and after the era of
the monuments of Tel-loh passed almost entirely out of
memory ; while the serpent became, what indeed he
always seems to have been in genuine Semitic belief, the
incarnation of wickedness and guile. We read in the
bilingual lists of "the evil serpent," "the serpent of
darkness ;" 2 and it is probable that the imagination of a
later time confounded this serpent of darkness with the
dragon Tiamat, the leader of the powers of night and
chaos. It was a curious process of development which
eventually transformed the old serpent -goddess, "the
lady Nina/' into the embodiment of all that was hostile
to the powers of heaven ; but, after all, Nina had sprung
from the fish-god of the deep, and Tiamat is herself " the
deep" in a Semitic dress.

At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle3 rather than

1 W.A.I. ii. 19,65.

2 W. A. I. ii. 24. 10, 12. The "evil serpent" is called "the mon
strous (russu) serpent of the sea" in W. A. I. ii. 19, 17.

3 Elim in Accadian, d-itanu in Assyrian (W.A.I, ii. 6, 7; 59, 5 ;

LECTURE IV.

as an antelope. It was thus that he was entitled "the
princely gazelle," "the lusty gazelle," " the gazelle who
gives the earth" (W.A.I, ii. 55. 31—33) ; and Merodach
as his son is termed Asari-elim, "the mighty one of the
gazelle-god." A hymn which celebrates Merodach under
a number of his archaic names, declares that he is "Asari-
elim, the mighty prince, the light (of the gods), the
director of the laws of Anu, Bel (Mul-lil) (and Ea)."1
The gazelle, however, was more correctly appropriated to
Mul-lil of Mpur, who was specially called "the gazelle-
god."2 We may infer, accordingly, that the gazelle had
once been the totem of Nipur, and the representative of
its god of the under- world. It was, indeed, a peculiarly
sacred animal. We find it repeatedly on the early Chal-
dsean cylinders, sometimes being offered in sacrifice to a
deity, sometimes simply standing at his side as a symbol.
It frequently takes the place of the goat, which was also
sacred, and as such was exalted into the Zodiacal sign of
Capricornus. Since Tebet, the tenth month, corresponds
to the sign of Capricornus and was dedicated to Pap-sukal,
it is possible that Pap-sukal, " the messenger of the gods,"
was himself the goat-god. At any rate, there was a
deity called Uz,3 the Accadian word for a goat ; and a

iv. 70, 55). The position of the name in the list of animals (W. A. I.
ii. 6, 7), shows what species of animal must be meant. Lulim, " a stag,"
seems to be a re-duplicated form of the same word. Both lulim and
elim are said to be equivalent to sarru, " king."

1 K 2854, 5. 6. In line 10, Merodach is apparently identified with
the god Tutu, of whom it is said that " he confronts their life" (BA-AN-TB
ana napisti-sunu). In the first line he is called Asari, saUs zalmat
kakkadi, " nourisher (?) of the black-headed race." Comp. W. A. I. ii.
55, 69.

2 W. A. I. iv. 70, 55 ; ii. 59, 5.

3 In W. A. I. ii. 48, 34, the archaic Babylonian form of the character

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 285

curious piece of sculpture on a stone tablet found by
Mr. Eassam in the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara
describes " Sin, Samas and Istar," as being " set as com
panions at the approach to the deep in sight of the god
Uz."1 The " crown of the Sun-god" is further said to
be the HZ, or " glory," of the eyes, with a play upon the
resemblance of the Semitic word uzzu, " glory," to the
Accadian uz, "a goat." The god Uz himself is depicted
as sitting on a throne, watching the revolution of the
solar disk, which is placed upon a table and slowly turned
by means of a rope. He holds in his hand a ring and
bolt, and is clad in a robe of goats' skin, the sacred dress
of the Babylonian priests. It reminds us of "the skins
of the kids of the goats" which Eebekah put upon Isaac
in order that he might receive his father's blessing. The
milk of the goat appears in the liturgical texts along with
other offerings to the gods ; thus we read in a hymn : 2

" The milk of a light-coloured3 goat which in a pure feeding-place
the shepherd of Tammuz4 has reared,

Uz is glossed by Utuki, " the (great) spirit," and explained to be synony
mous with the Sun-god. As the document or documents upon which
this tablet is a commentary seem to have been a product of the court
of Sargon at Accad, we may infer that Uz, " the goat," was a title of the
Sun-god of Sippara. The mythical "goat with six heads" is referred
to in a bilingual text (W. A. I. iv. 30, 11).

1 W. A. I. v. 60. Timi here means "companions," from emu, "to
make like." The common word birit has nothing to do with either
birit, " chain," or birtu, " a citadel," but is from baru, " to see."

2 W. A. I. iv. 28, 3.

3 Asundu, Accadian 6ig-&ga, " the long-horned," rendered banu, 01
"light-coloured," in W. A. I. iv. 24, 11 ; ii. 6, 32. The species of goat
was called zur (Semitised into surru) in Accadian (W.A.I, ii. 2. 284,
285, compared with 21. 41).

4 Not " the shepherd Tammuz," which would require the converse
order of words.

236 LECTURE IV.

the milk of the goat let the shepherd give thee with his pure hands
Mingle (it) in the middle of the skin of a suckling1 yet unborn.
Let the god Azaga-siiga,2 the supreme goat of Mul-lil, with his

pure hands cause (it) to be eaten.
Merodach the son of Eridu has given the charm ;
0 Nin-akha-kiida,3 lady of the purely-gleaming water, make the

worshipper pure and bright !"

Here the divine goat is associated with Mul-lil, and
perhaps we may therefore conclude that it was specially
adored at Nipur. The inference is not certain, however,

1 Uniki, Accadian QAR-US, in a liturgical fragment (S 712, 5) we
read of " the wool (or hair) of a QAR-US yet unborn ;" and in S 2073,
R 9, mention is made of "the flesh of the QAR."

2 " The god of far-reaching purity " or perhaps " the distant gleam " (?).
'Suga, however, may represent diga, " the horned one." In W. A. I.
ii. 4, 662, 6igga is written s'iqqa, and in 6, 5, seqa, and rendered by the
Assyrian atudu, "he-goat." In W. A. I. iii. 68, 12 — 14, Azaga-suga
(sud), the wife of Rimmon, is called the milch-kid of Mul-lil, and the
names of its two shepherds are given in lines 36, 37.

3 Nin-akha-kiida is invoked in other magic formulae : so in W. A. I.
iv. 15, 39, it is said of the sick man, "May Nin-akha-kudda seize upon
his body and rest upon his head !" and in Haupt's KeUschrifttexte, ii. 26,
she is mentioned along with Bahu and Gula. In W. A. I. ii. 58. 48, 49,
we read of " the pure water of Ea, the purely-gleaming water of Nin-
akha-kudda, the water of the pure hand, of the pure deep," where the
goddess is associated with Ea and the deep; and in D.T. 57. Obv. 14 — 16,
we have " the spell of Ea and Merodach, the spell of Damu and Gula,
the spell of Nin-akha-kudda." Similarly in 1266. 12, 13, an invocation
is addressed to " Nin-akha-kuddu, Nin-kurra, [En-nu-]gi the son of
Nin-si-nagar-bu, and Nin-zadim." In K4195, 12, Nin-akha-kuddu is
identified with Iskhara or Istar. In M 192, 4 sq., "the daily food" is
enumerated of Mul-lil, Ea " the king of the deep," " the divine king of
the gods and the queen (of the gods)," Samas " the lord of crowns, the
decider of (destiny)," "the god who prospers all above and below,"
Merodach, Adar "the first-born of Mul-lil," Nin-akha-kuddu, Nin-
karratim and Istar. Nin-akha-kudda means " the lady who divides the
rising (fresh) water" as appears from the statement in W. A. I. iii. 68, 40,
that she was " the lady of the rising waters (a-khad) of Ea." The fol
lowing line shows that Agubba, " the purely-gleaming water" (sunqu in
Assyrian), was also deified.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISAT. 287

as the text belongs to that later period when the cities
and deities of Babylonia hud been brought into union
with one another.

I have already alluded to the fact that the Sun-god of
Nipur was connected with the pig. Adar was " lord of
the swine, " and the swine would therefore seem to have
once been a totem of the city in which he was worshipped.
Nothing could show more clearly that Babylonian tote-
mism belongs to the pre-Semitic history of the country,
and the conclusion is supported by the large place
occupied by the dog in what I may call the zoological
mythology of Chaldsea. In Semitic times the dog was
as distasteful to the Babylonians as he was, and is, to
the Semitic inhabitants of other parts of the world. We
have a proof of this in a prayer against the powers of
evil, in which we read :

" (From) the baleful fetter, the fetter which injures the feet .... the
dog, the snake, the scorpion, the reptile, and whatsoever is baleful, the
possession of the heart, the possession (of the body, may Merodach
preserve us)."1

The dog is avoided by the earlier art of Assyria ; and
even in Babylonia, where a particular and much-esteemed
breed existed, almost the only representation of the animal
that is known is on a terra-cotta plaque of the Sassanian
period.2 Nevertheless, there was a time when the Baby-

1 K (unnumbered), 19 — 21, buanu Hmnu buanu naptsu sa sepa ....
UR-KU tsir GIRTAB nammas(tuv) u nin limnu tsibit libbi taibit (zumri).

2 See the illustration of a " Terra-cotta Tablet from Babylon, repre
senting an Indian dog," in Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 527. In.
Assyria, it is not until we come to the time of Assur-bani-pal that we
find the dog represented in the bas-reliefs. The five clay figures of dogs,
with their names inscribed upon them, now in the British Museum,
belong to the same monarch. The names are (1) Epar tallik epus
nabakha, " He ran and barked ;" (2) Musetsu limnuti, " the producer

288 LECTURE IV.

Ionian dog was otherwise regarded. Merodach and the
dog were brought into connection with one another.
The beneficent god of later Babylonian religion owned
four divine hounds, named Ukkumu, " the seizer," Akkulu,
"the devourer," Iksuda, "the capturer," and Iltebu,
" the pursuer."1 We may suspect that the dogs were not
always sent on errands of mercy, and that originally they
had been devastating winds who followed in the track of
a death-dealing god. An incantation begins with the
words : " 0 Merodach, the lord of death, thy hand esta
blishes the house of light,"2 where perhaps we have a
tradition of the age when Merodach was not as yet the
god who raises the dead to life, but the god of death
only. At all events, the hounds appear in no favourable
character in the fragment of a legend which related to
the shepherd Matsarat-pi-baladhi (?).3 After a reference
to Eimmon, the shepherd's heart is told to rejoice because
of the message sent him by Ea through the lips of Mero
dach. "(Ea) has heard thee," it is said to him; "when
the great dogs" assault thee, then " Matsarat-pi-baladhi,
shepherd of the flock, seize them from behind and lay
them down. Hold them and overcome them. Strike
their head, pierce (nihi) their breast. An expedition
they are gone ; never may they return ! "With the wind

of mischief;" (3) Dayan rits-su, "the judge of his companions;" (4)
Munasiku gari-su, " the biter of his foes ;" (5) Kasid abi, " the seizer of
enemies." See Houghton on " The Mammalia of the Assyrian Sculp
tures" in the Irans. Soc. Bib. Arch. v. 1.

1 W. A. I. ii. 56, 22—25. Iltebu may be derived from lahbu, " to
be violent."

2 R2. 11. 153. Rev. 7,8.

3 K 2546. The name is written ENNUX-KA-TI, "watch of the mouth
of life."

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 289

may they go, with the storm above it ! Take their road
and cut off their going. Seize their mouth, seize their
mouth, seize their weapons ! Seize their teeth (sut\ and
make them ascend, by the command of Ea, the lord of
wisdom ; by the command of the Sun-god, the lord of all
that is above ; by the command of Merodach, the lord of
revelation" (bar-bar-ti). The recitation of this curious
legend formed part of a religious ceremony, and was
ordered to be followed by the triple repetition of a prayer
"before the god Azag-suga." This god, as we have
seen, was primarily a goat, and it was no doubt on this
account that a portion of an old poem about a shepherd
who had driven away the dogs from his flock was intro
duced into the service. The poem, however, like the
service, transports us to Semitic days; the dog has
become a hateful creature, and what divinity he has is
of a demoniac character.

Unlike the dog, the ox remained in honour among the
Babylonians, and the mythologists accordingly did not
wholly forget that one at least of "the great gods" had
once been identified with this animal. An early geogra
phical list calls Dapara, " the mountain of the Bull-god,"
the country of crystal j1 and that this was to be sought
in southern Babylonia is indicated by the name of the
Uknu, the river of "crystal." There is some evidence
that the primitive Bull-god was Merodach himself. Ea
and his wife had each two divine "bulls" attached to
them, those of Ea being named "the god of the field of
Eden" and "the god of the house of Eden."2 These
bull-gods must be distinguished from the colossal figures,

1 W. A. I. ii. 51, 13, a W. A. I. ii. 56, 59—62.

290 LECTURE IV.

the winged bulls, that guarded the entrance to a temple.*
"We may speak of the latter as " Assyrian bulls," but
such was never their name among either Babylonians or
Assyrians. To them they represented divine beings, the
gods or genii of the household, in fact, but not bulls. The
face was wanting which was needed to transform the
colossus into an image of the animal. The human head
showed that the creature was endowed with humanity
as much as Ea-bani, the friend of Gisdhubar, whose
body terminated in the legs of a goat, but who was
nevertheless in all respects a man. The bull-like body
of the divine guardians of the household symbolised
strength, at all events to the Semitic Babylonian, who
persistently paraphrased the Accadian word for "bull,"
when used as a proper name, by words that denoted
"hero" and "strong one." The winged bulls and the
divine bulls of Eridu were not one and the same, however
much the imagination of a later day may have tended to
confound them together.

The fact that the two great deities of Eridu were thus
attended by a body-guard of divine bulls, makes us in
clined to connect the Bull-god of Dapara very closely
indeed with the city of Eridu. "We need not be astonished,
therefore, at finding Merodach entitled in early astrono
mical literature Gudi-bir, " the bull of light." The sky,
as we have seen, was regarded as a second Babylonian
plain, over which the sun ploughed his way along the
ecliptic or " furrow of heaven." The pole-star was called

1 In Accadian, alad and lamma; in Assyrian, sedu, buhidu and
lamassu. The last word seems to have been borrowed from the Acca
dian lamma in its primitive form (lamas). Alad is " the spirit," from
ala, with the suffix d(d).

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 291

its "yoke,"1 and Jupiter, the nearest of the planets to
the ecliptic, was known as Lubat-Gudibir, "the wether"
or " planet of the Bull of Light." The Bull of Light,
therefore, was himself the ploughman of the celestial
fields, the Sun-god who trod his steady path through the
heavenly signs, like the patient ox who dragged the plough
through the fields below. It was as the Sun-god, moving
through the twelve Zodiacal signs of the year, that Mero-
dach, it is asserted, was known by this particular name.
Now the explanation of the name of Gudibir as Mero-
dach, the Sun-god, comes from a tablet which seems to
have been a philological commentary on the astronomical
works compiled for the court of Sargon of Accad. We
know that Sargon' s patronage of science produced the
great standard Babylonian work on astronomy and astro
logy, in seventy-two books, which went under the name
of the " Observations of Bel." It was translated into
Greek by the Chaldsean historian Berossos, and large
portions of it, including a table of contents, are among
the tablets found on the site of the library of Xouyunjik.
In the course of centuries it had undergone a large
amount of interpolation and addition; marginal glosses
had crept into the text, and new paragraphs had been
inserted recording the observations that had been made

1 Or rather, perhaps, the constellation of Draco generally, a Dra-
conis "being at the time the pole-star. The star (or constellation) was
called MU-BU-KHIR-DA in Accadian, which the Semitic astronomers
paraphrased by "the star of Ann, the arbiter (mamit) of heaven"
(W.A.I, ii. 47, 16), and more literally "the yoke of heaven" (v. 18,
24). The Accadian (or rather Sumerian) is probably to be read gu&ir
kesda, " yoke of the enclosure." Gisra and gisrara, gitisa. gissilla and
gunirra^ are given as dialectical forms of the Accadian word for " yoke "
(W.A.I, v. 18. 17, 19, 20, 21; 15, 28).

u2

292 LECTURE IV.

by the astronomers and astrologers of Babylonia during
the whole length of the historical period. In the form,
therefore, in which it was edited for the library of
Nineveh, it was very different from the original work
that had been composed by the orders of Sargon. Old
and new matter had been mixed up in it, and the enlarge
ments introduced into it had probably nearly doubled its
original size. But the original work was itself a com
pilation of records and observations that had been made
during an untold number of previous years. These
records and observations had for the most part been
written in Accadian ; the result being that, although the
astronomy of the Chaldeeans, as we know it, is purely
Semitic in form and character, many of its technical
terms are non- Semitic, as well as the names of the celestial
bodies. Hence it is that we find a remarkable inconsis
tency between certain facts reported by the astronomical
tablets and the astronomical system which they set before
us. This astronomical system is based upon the assump
tion that the sun enters the first point of the constellation
Aries at the time of the vernal equinox. The system
must therefore have come into existence later than the
26th century before the Christian era, when Aries first
became the starting-point of the Zodiacal signs. But
the signs themselves were named, and the path of the
sun through them was mapped out, when the vernal
equinox still coincided with the sun's entrance, not into
Aries, but into Taurus. The whole pre-Semitic nomen
clature of the Zodiacal signs, and the months of the year
that correspond to them, rests on the supposition that the
Zodiacal bull ushers in the vernal year. Its Accadian
name was "the directing Bull," the bull that directs

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 293

the course of the year ; and the sign which faced it, the
Scorpion of a later age, was correspondingly termed the
star "that is opposite to the foundation" of the year.

"We can now understand why the Sun-god Merodach,
whom even the astronomers of the historical period con
tinued to identify with the typical constellations of the
twelve months of the year,1 should have been entitled
" the Bull of Light" in the primitive astronomical records.
He was, in fact, the celestial bull who ploughed the
the great furrow of the sky, and from whom the first
sign of the Zodiac borrowed its name. We may see in
him the prototype of that famous bull of later legend
whom Anu created in order to avenge upon Gisdhubar
the slight offered by the latter to Istar. The Sun-god
eventually became the monster slain by a solar hero.
Such are the results of time working upon the half -for
gotten beliefs and tales of an earlier age.

"While in some instances the old totemistic conceptions
were evaded by the degeneration of a god into a mere
animal, in others the reverse process took place, the
bestial element being eliminated from the nature of the
god. It was thus that uthe divine storm-bird" of the
ancient Accadian faith passed into the god Zu of the
Semitic epoch. "The divine storm-bird" was a ravenous
bird of prey, of large size and sharp beak, who darted on
its spoil and devoured the flesh. The Semitic Babylonians
identified it with their Zu, partly because zu signified a

1 W. A. I. iii. 53, 2. In Nisan, the first month, he was accordingly
identified with Dun-kun-e, " the hero of the rising dawn," or Mercury,
who is elsewhere called " the prince of the men of Harran" (iii. 67, 28),
in consequence of the cult that was carried on there. In Adar, the last
month, he was "the fish of Ea" or Pisces. "The Bull of heaven"
(Gud-ana) is mentioned in iii. 53, 56

294 LECTURE IV.

" stormy wind," partly because a species of vulture was
called by the same name. But the conception of the
tempest as a bird which rushes on its prey is common to
many mythologies. In Aryan mythology the storm-
cloud appears under the varying forms of the eagle, the
woodpecker, and the robin redbreast, the sacred bird of
Thor; while in Chinese folk-lore the storm-bird is "a
bird which in flying obscures the sun and of whose quills
are made water- tuns." The roc of the Arabian Mghts,
with its wings ten thousand fathoms in width, and its
egg which it was a sin in Aladdin to wish to take from
the place where it hung, is but an echo of the Chinese
storm-bird. It is in the nest of the storm-bird that the
tempest is brewed; it swoops upon the earth with the rush
of his wings, and the lightning itself is but the gleam
of his flight. Even a poet of to-day instinctively speaks
of the curlews as " dreary gleams about the moorland
flying over Locksley Hall."

"The divine storm-bird" was known as Lugal-banda,
"the lusty king," and was the patron deity of the city
of Marad, near Sippara. He brought the lightning, the
fire of heaven, from the gods to men, giving them at
once the knowledge of fire and the power of reading the
future in the flashes of the storm. Like Prometheus,
therefore, he was an outcast from the gods. He had
stolen their treasures and secret wisdom, and had com
municated them to mankind. In Babylonia, as in Greece,
the divine benefactor of primitive humanity was doomed
to suffer. The knowledge and the artificial warmth man
has gained are not the free gifts of the gods ; they have
been wrenched from them by guile; and though man
has been allowed to retain them, his divine friend and

PEOMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 295

benefactor is condemned to punishment. The culture-
god of totemistic Marad is thus a very different being
from the culture-god of Eridu; both, indeed, are clad
in animal form; but whereas the fish-god of Eridu is
the willing and unhindered communicator of civilisation,
whose successor, Merodach, becomes a god of light and
healing, the bird-god of Marad is a pariah among his
divine brethren, hunted out of heaven by the great gods,
and wresting from them by craft man's future knowledge
of good and evil. It was only in the later syncretic age,
when these uglier facts of the earlier mythology were
glossed over or forgotten, that the divine "bull" was
described as " the offspring of the god Zu" (W. A. I. iv.
23, 19).

The scribes of Assur-bani-pal have preserved for us
the mutilated copy of a bilingual poem, or part of a
poem, which recounted the flight of Zu to the mountain
of 'Sabu or Kis. It begins thus : 1

" Lugal-tudda (fled) to the mountain a place remote
In the hill of 'Sabu he (dwelt).
No mother inhabits it and (cares for him).
No father inhabits it and (associates) with him.
No priest2 who knows him (assists him).
He who (changed) not the resolution, even the resolution of his

heart,

in his own heart (he kept) his resolution.
Into the likeness of a bird was he transformed,
into the likeness of Zu the divine storm-bird was he transformed.
His wife uplifts the neck.3

The wife of Zu, the son of Zu, may he cause them to dwell in a
cage,

1 W.A.I. iv. 14, No. 1.

2 Kal, "the gallus -priest" in the Accadian. The Semitic version
has aqru, "noble."

3 Assyrian tu(llc) ; see W. A. I. iv. 15, 41.

296 LECTUBE IV.

even the god of tlie river-reeds (Enna) and the goddess the lady

of the basket of river-reeds (Gu-enna).1
From his mountain he brought (her),
as a woman fashioned2 for a mother made beautiful,3
the goddess of plants,4 as a woman fashioned for a mother made

beautiful.

Her paps5 were of white crystal ;
her thighs6 were bathed in silver and gold.

[Here follow many mutilated lines.]
On (his) head he placed a circlet j
.... on his head he set a coronal
(when) he came from the nest of the god Zu.
(In a place) unknown in the mountain he made his tomb."

It will be seen that the identity of the god Zu with a
bird is explained in accordance with the ideas of a modern
time. It has become a transformation voluntarily under
gone by the deity, for the sake, as it would seem, of
securing a beautiful bride. The old faith of totemism is

1 Nin-Gu-enna was resolved into the Semitic Bilat-ili (W. A. I. ii.
55, 11); but according to W. A. I. iii. 67, 56, she was peculiarly the
utuk, or " spirit of the temple of Mu ..." The Gu-enna, or guardian
of the river, was the title of an officer (K 177, 30).

2 Not "clever," as Lyon.

3 In the Semitic translation : " a mother who has been appointed
for beauty."

4 In the Accadian original, Mn-ka-si. Her nine sons are enumerated
in W. A. I. iii. 68, 25—32, the eldest being 'Siris, " the goddess of
plants," herself ! Among the others are " the god of the pure tongue,"
''the god of the strong tongue," "the god of the beautiful tongue,"
"the god of the palate of the fat mouth," and "the god who is not
powerful." Kin-ka-si should probably be read Nin-gu-siga, "lady of
the full mouth."

5 Accadian kakkul. The Assyrian mazu is the Hebrew riTE, and
means " to suck," not " to pour out," as Zimmern supposes. Namzitum
is also found in K161. iii. 24, and R358, 4 (where it signifies "a
bowl").

6 Comp. W. A. I. ii. 1, 175, and 41, 53. The Accadian seems to be

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 297

thus changing into a fairy-tale. But there were other
stories which remembered that the transformation of the
god was not the voluntary act it is here represented to
have been. A long but broken text explains why it was
that he had to take refuge in the mountain of 'Sabu
under the guise of a bird of prey. We learn that Zu
gazed upon the work and duties of Mul-lil; " he sees
the crown of his majesty, the clothing of his divinity,
the tablets of destiny, and Zu himself, and he sees also
the father of the gods, the bond of heaven and earth.
The desire to be Eel (Mul-lil) is taken in his heart ; yea,
he sees the father of the gods, the bond of heaven and
earth ; the desire to be Bel is taken in his heart : ' Let me
seize the tablets of destiny of the gods, and the laws of
all the gods let me establish (lukhmum) ; let my throne
be set up, let me seize the oracles ; let me urge on the
whole of all of them, even the spirits of heaven.' So his
heart devised opposition; at the entrance to the forest
where he was gazing he waited with his head (intent)
during the day. When Bel pours out the pure waters,
his crown was placed on the throne, stripped from (his
head). The tablets of destiny (Zu) seized with his hand ;
the attributes of Bel he took; he delivered the oracles.
(Then) Zu fled away and sought his mountains. He
raised a tempest, making (a storm)."

Then Mul-lil, " the father and councillor " of the gods,
consulted his brother divinities, going round to each in
turn. Anu was the first to speak. He " opened his
mouth, he speaks, he says to the gods his sons : * (Who
ever will,) let him subjugate Zu, and (among all) men
let the destroyer pursue him (?).' (To Eimmon) the first
born, the strong, Anu declares (his) command, even to

298 LECTURE IV.

him : . . . < 0 Eimmon, protector (?), may thy power of
fighting never fail ! (Slay) Zu with thy weapon. (May
thy name) be magnified in the assembly of the great gods.
(Among) the gods thy brethren (may it destroy) the
rival. May incense (?) (etarsi) be offered, and may
shrines be built ! (In) the four (zones) may they esta
blish thy strongholds. May they magnify thy fortress
that it become a fane of power in the presence of the
gods, and may thy name be mighty?' (Eimmon)
answered the command, (to Anu) his father he utters
the word : ' (0 my father, to a mountain) none has seen
inayest thou assign (him) ; (never may) Zu play the thief
(again) among the gods thy sons ; (the tablets of destiny)
his hand has taken; (the attributes of Bel) he seized, he
delivered the oracles ; (Zu) has fled away and has sought
his mountains.' ' Eimmon goes on to decline the task,
which is accordingly laid upon another god, but with
like result. Then Anu turns to Nebo : " (To Nebo), the
strong one, the eldest son of Istar, (Anu declares his
will) and addresses him : ... ' 0 Nebo, protector (?),
never may thy power of fighting fail ! (Slay) Zu with
thy weapon. May (thy name) be magnified in the as
sembly of the great gods ! Among the gods thy brethren
(may it destroy) the rival ! May incense (?) be offered
and may shrines be built ! In the four zones may thy
strongholds be established ! May they magnify thy
stronghold that it become a fane of power in the presence
of the gods, and may thy name be mighty ! ' !N"ebo
answered the command : ' 0 my father, to a mountain
none hast seen mayest thou assign (him) ; never may Zu
play the thief (again) among the gods thy sons ! The
tablets of destiny his hand has taken ; the attributes of

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 299

Bel he has seized ; he has delivered the oracles ; Zu is
fled away and (has sought) his mountains.' ' Like Bim-
mon, Nebo also refused to hunt down and slay his brother
god, the consequence being, as we have seen, that Zu
escaped with his life, but was changed into a bird, and
had to live an exile from heaven for the rest of time.

The " divine storm-bird," however, who invested him
self by stealth with the attributes of Mul-lil, and carried
the knowledge of futurity to mankind, served to unite
the two species of augury which read the future in the
flight of birds and the flash of the lightning. The first
species was but a branch of the general pseudo-science
which discovered coming events from the observation of
animals and their actions, while the second species was
closely allied to the belief that in the thunder men heard
the voice of the gods. The old belief marked its impress
upon Hebrew as well as upon Assyro-Babylonian thought.
" The voice of thy thunder was in the whirlwind,'7 says
the Psalmist ; 1 and nothing can show more clearly what
must once have been the Canaanitish faith than the poetic
imagery of another Psalm (xxix.) : " The voice of the
Lord is upon the waters ; the God of glory thundereth ;
the Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is
powerful ; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The
voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord
breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. . . . The voice of the
Lord shaketh the wilderness ; the Lord shaketh the wil
derness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord maketh the
hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests." In the
Talmud, " the voice of the Lord" has become the lath qol,

1 Ps. Ixxvii. 18.

300 LECTURE IV.

or " daughter of the voice," a supernatural message from
heaven which sometimes proceeded from the Holy of
Holies, sometimes, like the Scu/wmov of Socrates, assumed
the form of an intuition directing the recipient as to his
course in life.1

This prophetic voice of heaven was heard m the thunder
by the Accadians as well as by the Semites. I have
already noticed that the Accadians believed the sounds
of nature to be divine voices, from which the initiated
could derive a knowledge of the future. At Eridu it
was more especially the roar of the sea in which the
Sumerian priest listened to the revelations of his deities,
and this perhaps was the oracle through which Cannes
had spoken to men. In the rival city of northern Baby
lonia, where the supreme god presided over the realm of
the dead, and not over the waters of the sea, the divine
voice came to men in the thunder. By the side of Mul-
lil, the lord of the ghost -world, stood Mul-me-sarra
(Wiil-mo-sara), " the lord of the voice of the firmament."
Mul-me-sarra, in fact, was but Mul-lil himself in another
form, and hence, as lord of Hades, was the author, not
only of the thunder, but of subterranean noises as well.
It is thus that he is addressed in a hymn, which is, how
ever, not older than the Semitic period : 2

1 See Dr. S. Louis in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archeology, Ap. 6, 1886, pp. 117, 118.

2 K 48. It is probably quite late, but embodies earlier ideas. There
is no Accadian text attached to it. On the reverse, which is almost
entirely destroyed, mention is made of "six hymns" to Samas, Mero-
dach and Anu, besides other hymns to Merodach which had to be
recited on the north side of the altar, and a hymn or hymns to Kusku
on the east side of it. "Altogether," it is stated, " there are fifteen
hymns (to be said} on the north and east sides. On the west, nine

i

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 301

" 0 lord of the voice of the firmament, lord of the earth, prince of

Hades,
lord of the place1 and the mountain from whence none returns,

even the mountain of the spirits of earth,
ordainer of the laws of the earth, the mighty bond of heaven and

earth,
mighty lord, in whose absence Nin-girsu will not direct in garden

and canal, will not create the crop (appuna) ;
lord of the fetter (umasi\ who in his might rules the earth,
strengthening the broad (earth), holding the bolts of the lower

world,

giving sceptre and reign to Anu and Mul-lil ;
by thy command let the foundation-stone of this place
last long before thee at all seasons;2

like the seat of thy lordship let it be a judgment-hall on earth.
Upon it may Anu, Bel and Ea firmly establish the throne."

Perhaps Mul-me-sarra is also the deity who is addressed
in another hymn3 as "the warrior-god (Erimmu), the
bright one, the sword (or lightning) of Istar," and of
whom it is said: "May he give thee rest with kindly
hand (rittu], may he rain life and tranquillity upon thee
with his hand ! " Under the name of Iskhara, Istar herself
was called "the sword" or "lightning of heaven," and
as such was identified with the constellation of the
Scorpion;4 and the hand of the goddess Bunene is enti
tled "the inundator of the lightning," that of the Ela-
mite god Lagamar being " the inundator of the earth,"

hymns to Assur, Mul-me-sarra, the Sun of midday, Laz (?), and the
Hero-god (Dun) who quiets the heart, Bel of cattle, the Lady of cattle,
Bel of the pure mound (Birs-i-Nimrud), (and) the Lady of the pure
mound. Offer sacrifices, lay reeds which have been cut up, offer food
and oil ; let the hand of the prince take honey and butter, the food of
the god of revelations (BAR-BAR), and recite the following."

1 Asriy possibly for asari, " destruction," here.

2 Or, perhaps, "all the cardinal points" (IM-KAK-A-BI).

8 K2. 111. 150. Obv. « K4195, 8—10.

302 LECTURE IV.

and that of the god of impurity "the inundator of the
crown (?)."*

The voices heard by the Babylonian in nature, however,
were not a whit more sacred to him than the inarticulate
voice which found expression in the name. Like all
primitive peoples, the Chaldeans confounded the person
and the name by which he was known. The name, in
fact, was the personality, and whatever happened to the
name would happen equally to the personality. Injury
could be done to a person by using his name in a spell ;
and, similarly, to pronounce the name of a deity compelled
him to attend to the wishes of the priest or exorcist.
As among the ancient Egyptians, the secret names of
the gods — many of them heirlooms from a primaeval age,
whose actual meaning was forgotten — were not only
especially holy, but also especially efficacious. Names,
consequently, like the persons or things they represented,
were in themselves of good and evil omen; and the
Babylonian would have sympathised with the feeling
which made the Roman change Maleventum into Bene-
ventum, or has caused the Cape of Storms to become the
Cape of Good Hope. Whether this superstition about
names was of purely Semitic origin, or whether it was
shared in by the Accadians, we have no means of deter
mining at present ; the analogy of other races, however,
in a corresponding stage of social development would
lead us to infer that the superstition was the independent
possession of Accadians and Semites alike. At all events,
it was deeply imprinted upon the Semitic mind. The
sacredness attached to the name of the God of Israel

i K 220, Rev.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 303

among the later Jews, and the frequent employment of
the name for the person of the Lord, bear witness to the
fact. "When Moses was ordained to his mission of lead
ing his people out of Egypt and forming them into a
nation, it was prefaced by what was henceforth to be
the sacred and national name of their God.

There were names of good fortune and names of evil
fortune,1 and special significance was attached to a
change of name. Three successive usurpers of the throne
of Assyria — Pul, Ulula or Ilulaios, and the father of
Sennacherib — all discarded their old names on the suc
cessful accomplishment of their usurpation. Pul and
Ulula adopted those of the two famous monarchs of the
older Assyrian dynasty, Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser,
retaining their original designations only in Babylonia,
where the names they had adopted were associated with
ideas of hostility and invasion; while Sargon, who claimed
to be lord of Babylonia as well as of Assyria, identified
himself with the past glories of the ancient kingdom by
taking the name of Sargon of Accad. The adoption of
these time-honoured names of itself conferred legitimacy
upon the new claimants of the throne; along with the
name they inherited the title and the claim to veneration
of those who had borne them. It must have been for a
similar reason that Esar-haddon's name, according to
Sennacherib, was changed to that of Assur-etil-yukin-
abla, "Assur the hero has established the son," "for
affection's sake,"2 though the prince preferred to retain
his earlier appellation of Esar-haddon or Assur-akh-

1 W. A. I. v. 27, 49—52.

2 Ki ruha, W.A.I, iii. 16, 3. Possibly the change of name was
occasioned by the death of an elder brother.

304 LECTURE IV.

iddina, "Assur has given the brother," after his accession
to the throne. We are reminded of the records of the
Jews, from which we learn that Jedidiah became the
Solomon of later history, and the Pharaoh of Egypt
"turned the name" of Eliakim into Jehoiakim.

The preservation of their names was a matter about
which the kings of Babylonia and Assyria were especially
anxious. Terrible curses are denounced against those
who should destroy or injure "the writing of their
names," and substitute their own names instead. On
the other hand, the gods are invoked to allow the names
of the kings to last " for ever," or to " guide their names
aright." Even captured cities have their names altered
in token of conquest, and it is possible that the scru
pulous care with which the names of foreign potentates
are recorded in the Assyrian annals, as well as the interest
shown by both Babylonians and Assyrians in the lan
guages of their neighbours, had to do with the peculiar
respect they paid to the name.

In the ancient hymns, the phrase, " mankind, what
soever be their name," is of frequent occurrence, and
seems to signify that as the special favours of the gods
could be showered only on those whose names were recited,
a vague and general expression of the kind would avoid
the difficulty of enumerating by its own name each divi
sion of the human race. So, too, when the author of a
penitential psalm speaks of a god or goddess whom he
"knew not," it is probable that he is thereby deprecating
the wrath of some offended deity with whose name he is
unacquainted.1 A hymn to the creator calls upon him

1 A fragment from the great medical work (M. 1101, Obv. 3 — 14),
in which the patient is allowed his choice of a practitioner's receipt or

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 305

under his various names to direct the laws of the world,
to raise the dead to life, to overthrow the wicked and
hostile, and to guide the stars of heaven, and puts into
the mouth of Ea the following words : " Since his name
has made his offspring strong, let his name be Ea even
as mine is ; all the bonds of my laws may he carry (to
them) ; all my secret wisdom may he bear away, through
the fifty names of the great gods." After this, it is said,
his hearers " pronounced his fifty names and wrote down
his precepts."1 As "the great gods" were fifty in num
ber,2 the ascription of their fifty names to the creator
was equivalent to identifying him with all of them.
When they lost their names, they lost their individual
personality as well.

Closely connected with the mystical importance thus
assigned to names was the awe and dread with which
the curse or excommunication was regarded. Once uttered
with the appropriate ceremonies, the binding of knots
and the invocation of divine names, it was a spell which
even the gods were powerless to resist. In Assyrian it

a charm, makes this pretty clear. The whole passage runs : " Cut up
some eyebright (?), the slice of a bird, the tongue of a dog, the plant
that grows in the plain, the flesh of the daslum, and the golden kakis
of the sheep (kakis lunum khuratsi, a species of grebe, according to
Houghton), and compound these six ingredients: (or make a khutesitiya
of herbs, offer beer, and repeat a spell seven times to the heart :) drink
the mixture in wine ; continue drinking (it) for three days, and on the
fourth day your health will be restored. (This is) the spell : * Thou,
whoever he is, who like a road has determined the path,' (which) repeat
in addition : * The god, whoever he is, who like a road has determined
the path, like long-drawn brandings (ke sadduti) he has loved my
ganni.'"

1 See above, p. 141.

» K 4029, Rev.

306 LECTURE IV.

was called the mamit , in Accadian the sabba,1 and was
naturally considered to be divine. In Accadian, Mami
had been a goddess ; 2 the borrowed Assyrian deity, there
fore, assumed the Semitic feminine termination. In the
tenth book of the Epic of Gisdhubar, the goddess Mam-
metu, as her name is there spelt, is called uthe maker of
fate" who "has fixed the destinies" of mankind, " along
with" the spirits of the earth ; " she has established death
and life, but the days of death are unknown."3

Mamit thus bore a striking resemblance to the Fate
of the Eomans and the Ate of the Greeks. Like Ate,
her operations were usually conceived of as evil. Just as
Namtar, the plague-demon, was also the personification
of doom and destioy, so too Mamit was emphatically
the concrete curse. If she established life as well as
death, it was only because the term of life is fixed by
death; death, and not life, was the real sphere of her
work. Hence the mamit was known among the Acca-
dians as the (nam-) erima or " hostile doom;" and though
Anu, as we have seen, might as the pole-star be called
" the mamit of heaven 2'' it is in no friendly guise that the
mamit is presented to us in the magical texts. It was,

1 In Surnerian, sagga, from an earlier sangua, perhaps connected
with danga, "a bond," whence the Semitic fanaqw, "to bind." A
special class of priests, " attached," like the Levites, to particular sanc
tuaries, took their name from sanga.

2 W. A. I. ii. 51, 55, " Mami the queen." "The river of Mami the
queen" seems to have been near Cutha, since both it and "the river of
the companion of Mami" come between "the river of the fortress of
Nergal" and " the river of the place of ascent of Laz." In K 220, Obv.
27, the goddess Mamiti is mentioned immediately before Nin-gur, " the
lady of the abyss."

3 Haupt, Babylonisclie Nimrodepos, p. 66. The Accadian equiva
lents of " the maker of fate" are given in W. A. I. v. 9, 10.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISU. 307

in fact, like the power of excommunication in the Middle
Ages, the most terrible weapon that could be used by the
priestly exorcist. For the power of invoking the aid of
the goddess Mamit by pronouncing the curse was com
pletely in his hands. All that was needed was the per
formance of certain rites and the repetition of certain
words. Armed with the magic wand,1 he could lay the
terrible excommunication on the head of his enemy, and
cause it to issue forth from the body of his friend. " Let
the mamit come forth that I may see the light," is one of
the petitions we meet with in the tablets ;2 and Tiglath-
Pileser I. states that after his conquest of the kings of
Kahri he " freed them, prisoners and bound as they were,
in the presence of the Sun-god (his) lord, and made them
swear to be his servants from henceforth and for ever,
under pain of the curse (mamit) of (his) great gods."3

In the hymns the mamit occupies a conspicuous place.
Thus we read :

" The river-god is bright like the digger of the ground. The curse
(flies) before him ; its cry (is) like that of a demon.4 All the land
^lows like the height of the sunset-horizon. May the sun at his rising
remove the darkness, and may there never be gloom in the house. May
the curse go forth to the desert, to a pure place. 0 spirit of heaven,
conjure the curse; 0 spirit of earth, conjure it ! — The formula for undo
ing the curse when the water of the river surrounds a man."5

1 Called gilgillum in Assyrian, "the reed of doom" in Accadian
(W.A.I, ii. 24. 2, 3). In a ritual text (1266, 1—6) the worshipper
is ordered to come into the presence of Ea, and, turning his face to the
rising sun, to " place the point (GIR) of the reed of the free-will offerings
and the reed of the priests (qci7i nindabi qan urugalli), the implements
(unut) of the gods as many as exist, the implements of the sons of the
people."

2 W. A. I. iv. 7, 7. 3 W. A. I. i. 13. Col. v. 12-^16.

4 In the Accadian, "the monstrous beast."

5 W.A.I, iv. 14, No. 2.

x2

308 LECTURE IV.

Another hymn begins in the following way :

• « 0 curse, curse, the boundary that none can pass ! The limit of
the gods (themselves) against which they may not transgress ! The
limit of heaven and earth which altereth not ! The unique god against,
whom none may sin ! l Neither god nor man can undo (it). A snare
not to be passed through, which is set for evil. Whether an evil utuk,
or an evil alu, or an evil ekimmu, or an evil gallu, or an evil god, or an
evil incubus, or a labartu, or a labatsu, or an akhkharu, or a lilu, or a
lilat, or the maid of a Ulu, or the evil plague-demon, or a disease-bring
ing asaTcku, or a bad sickness, which has set its head towards the drop
ping2 water of Ea, may the snare of Ea seize it ! which has stretched
its head against3 the wisps of Nirba (the Corn-god), may the lasso of
Nirba bind it ! Against the limitation (of the curse) it has transgressed.
Never may (the limitation) of the gods, the limitation of heaven and
earth, depart from it. (The limitation of the great) gods it reverences
not. May (the lasso of) the great gods bind it ! May the great gods
curse it ! May they send back (the demon) to (his) home ! The home
of (his) habitation may they cause him to enter ! As for him who has
turned to another place, to another place, a place invisible, may they
bring him ! As for him who has turned into the gate of the house,
the gate of a place from whence there is no exit may they cause him
to enter ! As for him who has stationed himself in the door and bolts,
in the door and bolts may they bind him with bonds from which there
is no release ! As for him who has blown (?) into the threshold and
socket, who into threshold and hinge has crept, like water may they
pour him out, like a cup may they shatter him, like a quarry-stone
may they break him to pieces ! As for him who has passed across the
beam, his wings may they cut ! As for him who has thrust his neck
into the chamber, may they twist his neck !"*

This is a fair sample of the incantations by means of
which the Babylonians believed that they could free

1 The Assyrian plays upon another meaning of the Accadian word,
and renders, " whom none may humble." Jensen is mistaken in con
sidering the Assyrian word to stand for musepilu.

2 "Tidal" seems to be meant. In W. A. I. iv. 3. 15, 16, izarrum
is interchanged with inattuku, "spits out," as a rendering of biz-biz-ene
(alternate renderings being, " thy weapon is the great monster \usum-
<jallu\ which from its mouth spits out the breath" or "drips blood").

* Assyrian, "drips upon," 4 W. A. I. iv. 16, No. 1.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 309

themselves from the demoniac agencies that surrounded
them. The power of the mamit was such that the gods
themselves could not transgress it, and the mamit was
accordingly invoked to protect the mortal from the demons
of plague and sickness. But the plague itself might be
regarded as a mamit or " doom" inflicted by heaven upon
the guilty earth. Such is the view taken in the following
fragment, which I once compared with the Biblical account
of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps
the doom of Sennacherib's host may furnish a closer
parallel : l

" A darkness came from the middle of the deep,
The doom des(cended) from the midst of the heaven,
The sword (mowed down) the earth like grass ;
Towards the four winds the flash (went) overthrowing like fire.
It sickened the men of the city, it tortured their bodies.
In city and land it caused lamentation ; small and great2 (alike)

it (smote).

Freeman and handmaid it bound ; with wailing it filled (them).
In heaven and earth like a storrn-cloud it rained ; it made a prey.
To the place of supplication of their god they hastened and raised

high the voice.
They received his mighty (aid) and like a garment it concealed

(them).
They .... him and the poison (was expelled ?).

. . . (they embraced) his feet.

[The next line is completely destroyed]..

his body was tried.
(In lamentation) he smites3 his breast."

The Babylonian, at all events in early times, did not

1 W.A.I, iv. 9, No. 1.

2 In the Accadian original the order is reversed : "great and small."

3 Udannis ; cf. S 949, Rev. 17, ina Mri u saJcparim ramani udannis,
"with scourges and in expiation I beat myself." Zimmern misreads
utannis, " he weakens."

310 LECTURE IV.

hold a very consistent theory about the origin of disease.
On the one hand, all sickness was ascribed to demoniacal
possession ; the demon had been eaten with the food, or
drunk with the water, or breathed in with the air, and
until he could be expelled there was no chance of recovery.
But, on the other hand, a pestilence, an epidemic, which
swept over a whole country, was regarded with the
same feelings of awe-struck veneration as the greater
gods themselves. It was believed to be an instrument
in their hands for punishing the sins and shortcomings
of mankind. As we shall see, the same theory was held
by the authors of the penitential psalms in respect of
maladies that attacked some single individual only ; but
it was the general persuasion when a wide-reaching cala
mity like a plague afflicted the country. The plague
consequently was held to be a divine being who was sent
by the gods, like the storm or the deluge, to take ven
geance on men for their misdeeds.

But this plague-god could be viewed under two aspects.
Under the older one he was Namtar, the plague-demon,
who was the minister of the gods of the lower world and
the arbiter of human fate. In Semitic times the minister
of divine anger approached more nearly the Jewish con
ception of the angel of death. He was himself a god,
and had under his command not only the " seven gods,"
but also a special messenger, Isum or Itak, " the street-
traverser."1 Isum was represented by the colossi which

1 On a cylinder in the possession of Dr. Huggins ; also in W. A. I.
iv. 2. 23, 24, where the word "traverser" is represented by nagir, and
the Accadian name of Isum — 'Sig-sagga, "the head of destruction" — is
given. Like the seven evil spirits, Isum was regarded as having the
form of a whirlwind.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 311

stood at the approach to a temple;1 his master's name
was Nerra (Nera), who, as we have seen, was one and
the same as Nergal, the god of the dead. Nerra, "the
warrior of the gods," as he is termed, appears in an old
legend, first brought to light by Mr. George Smith, as
bringing death and desolation upon the states of Ba
bylonia, apparently in consequence of their evil-doing.
" Anu had heard'7 the report of the seven gods who had,
perhaps, been sent to investigate what was going on upon
the earth. Accordingly he summoned Nerra ; " Let thy
hands march," he said, "since the inhabitants of the
country have seditiously broken their bond ; 2 and I have
set thy heart to cause desolation;3 thou shalt strike the
people of the black heads unto death with the desolation (?)
of the god Ner ; may thy weapons be their sword of
destruction, and let thy hands go !"4

Babylon is one of the first cities to feel the destroying
sword of the Chaldsean angel of death. It is besieged by
its foes, and during the siege, the sword, the famine and
the plague are let loose in its streets. Mul-lil is repre
sented as looking on, and at last saying in " his heart : "

" Nerra is crouching at his great gate among the corpses of the noble
and the slave : Nerra is crouching at the gate ; thou hast set his seat
(there). Their foes have besieged the men of Babylon,5 and thou art

1 W.A.I. ii. 50, 10.

2 Ki sa nisi dadme khubur-sina KA-KA irrikltatstsu.

3 Vbld-va libba-ka ana sakan kamarri. Kamarri is not " snare" here.

4 Zalmat-kakkadi ana sumutti taqqud puqu AN Ner ; hi kakki-ka iz-
Qin-ti-sunu-va lilliku iddka.

5 The same siege of Babylon may possibly have been referred to in
a tablet (S 2037), of which the ends only of a few lines remain. They
begin thus: (1) ... "he lamented; (2) .... he cried out; (3) . . .
seize me ; (4) . . . Babylon, is taken,"

312 LECTURE IV.

their curse. Thou didst bind them with chains (?) and didst fix the
doom (?), 0 warrior Nerra. Thou didst leave one and go forth against
another. The form of a dog dost thou assume and enterest into the
palace. The people saw thee ; their weapons were broken. The heart
of the high-priest, the avenger of Babylon, is full of valour ; when he
urged on his troops to take the spoil of the enemy, before the people
he has done wickedness. In the city to which I shall send thee thou
shalt fear no man, shalt reverence none • small and great slay together,
and leave not the youngest of the evil race. Thou shalt spoil the first
that come to Babylon, the people of the king which is gathered toge
ther and entered into the city, shaking the bow and setting up the
spear, auxiliaries who have transgressed against Ann and Dagon ; thou
shalt set up their weapons ; like the waters of the storm shalt thou give
their corpses to the open places of the city ; thou shalt open their trea
sures (?) and bid the river carry them away."1

Merodach mourned over the doom pronounced against
his city, and apparently with some effect ; for after a good
many broken and lost lines, the tablet goes on to describe
the despatch of the terrible plague-god to Erech, " the seat
of Anu and Istar, the city of the choirs of the festival-
makers and consecrated maidens of Istar," who " dreaded
death," for the nomad 'Suti of the desert had combined
against their state. The eunuch-priests were now com
pelled to bow the face before another deity than the
peaceful Istar, who " cried and was troubled over the
city of Erech." Eventually, however, Nerra was "quieted"
by " Isum his councillor, the illustrious god who goes
before him," " and the warrior Nerra spake thus : ' Sea-
land against sea -land, 'Sumasti against 'Sumasti, the
Assyrian against the Assyrian, the Elamite against the
Elamite, the Kosssean against the Kosseean, the Kurd
against the Kurd, the Lullubite against the Lullubite,
country against country, house against house, man against

i M 55, col. 1, 4—26.

PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. 313

man, brother against brother, let them destroy one another,
and afterwards let the Accadian come and slay them all,
and fall upon their breasts.' l The warrior Nerra (further)
addresses a speech to Isum, who goes before him : i Go,
Isum, incline all thy heart to the word thou hast spoken.'
(Then) Isum sets his face towards the land of the west ;
the seven warrior gods, unequalled, sweep (all things)
away behind him. At the land of Phoenicia, at the
mountains, the warrior arrived; he lifted up the hand,
he laid it on the mountain ; the mountain of Phoenicia
he counted as his own soil."

In thus marching to the west, the minister of the Ba
bylonian god of death approaches the country in which
another angel of pestilence was seen by the king of
Israel. " By the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite,"
David had beheld the angel of the Lord " stretching out
his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it." As in Babylon,
so too in Israel, the plague had been a visitation for the
sins of man. It was the instrument of God's anger
wielded by the hands of his angel-minister. That same
angel-minister had once before stood before Balaam, and
with a drawn sword in his hand had threatened the Syrian
prophet with death. He was not a demon from the
lower world, like the old Chaldaean plague-spirit Namtar ;
he was not the inexorable law of destiny, before whom
even the gods had to submit their wills ; but a member
of the celestial hierarchy, the messenger of a beneficent
God. He came to destroy, but it was to destroy the
guilty. The sins of man, and not the malevolence or
passionless law of a supernatural being, brought death

1 Comp. Is. xix. 2 — 4.

314 LECTURE IV.

and suffering into the world. The Babylonian legend of
Nerra, like the records of the Old Testament, tells the
same tale as the Babylonian story of the Deluge.

So remarkable an agreement, on the one hand, between
the religious conceptions of Semitic Babylonia and Israel,
and, on the other, their equally remarkable contrast to
the older Accadian doctrines embodied in the plague-
demon Namtar and Mamit the goddess of fate, can be
explained in only one way. Even if the fact stood alone,
and we had no knowledge of the earlier history of
Chaldsea, we should be forced to conclude that while the
later population of Babylonia belonged to the same race
as that which inhabited Palestine, it was essentially dif
ferent from the race which had formulated the older
beliefs. The Semitic belief, in fact, stands out in striking
contrast to beliefs which betrayed no consciousness of
human sin, and the necessity of finding in this an ex
planation of malevolent action on the part of the gods
above. The difference between the plague-god of Cutha
and the agencies which had once been imagined to work
evil to mankind, is a difference that cannot be bridged
over by any theory of development ; it is necessarily due
to a difference of race.

LECTURE V.
THE SACBED BOOKS OF CHALD^A.

To Francois Lenormant, whose untimely death was
an irreparable loss to the progress of Assyrian research,
belongs the merit of first describing and defining the
sacred books of ancient Babylonia. With the keenness
of perception that characterised him, he pointed out two
main collections of Babylonian sacred texts ; one contain
ing magic incantations and exorcisms ; the other, hymns
to the gods. The magical texts obviously belong to an
earlier and less advanced stage of religious belief than
the hymns ; they presuppose, in fact, a sort of Shamanism,
according to which each object and power of nature
has its si or " spirit," which can be propitiated only
by a sorcerer-priest and certain magical rites ; while the
hymns, on the other hand, introduce us to a world of
gods, and their language from time to time approaches a
high level of spiritual expression. The collection of
hymns Lenormant very happily named the Chaldsean
Big- Veda, and to them he subsequently added a third
collection, consisting of penitential psalms which in many
respects resemble the psalms of the Old Testament. All
three collections are generally composed in both Accadian
and Semitic Babylonian, the Semitic Babylonian being a
translation of the presumably older Accadian text which

316 LECTURE V.

is written line by line above it. It was natural to sup
pose that what has happened in the case of other sacred
books happened also in Babylonia ; that the magical texts
were first collected together, the collection subsequently
acquiring a sacred character ; and that a similar process
took place in the case of the hymns. The whole work
would have been complete before the culture and literature
of the Accadians were handed on to the Semites : in this
way the preservation of the Accadian originals would be
accounted for, the very words of the primitive documents
and their correct pronunciation having come to be looked
upon as sacred and inspired; while the Semitic interlinear
translation served, like the Aramaic Targums of the Old
Testament, to assist the priests in understanding the
object of their recitations. As time went on, the reli
gious beliefs which underlay the magical texts became
so far removed from those of a later age that the texts
themselves gradually passed into the background, the
collection of hymns taking more and more their place as
pre-eminently the Babylonian Bible.

The theory as thus stated is at once simple and pro
bable. But although in its main outlines it is no doubt
correct, further research has shown that its simplicity is
due to the imperfection of the materials upon which
Lenormant had to work, and that it will have to be very
considerably modified before all the facts now known to
us are accounted for.

In the first place, there are numerous magical texts
which are later, and not older, than many of the hymns.
Nothing is more common than to find a magical text
breaking off into a hymn or a fragment of a hymn the
recitation of which forms part of the spell or ceremony.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 317

A large number of the hymns that have come down to
us are thus embedded in the magical documents of which
they form an integral part. The hymn to the seven
evil spirits, for instance, quoted in a former Lecture, is
really a portion of one of the most famous of the magical
texts. In such instances there can be no question that
the hymn is older than the text in which it is found.
Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish the hymns when
used in this way from similar poetical addresses to divine
beings, which, so far from being especially sacred, were
employed as spells in medical practice.

Thus in a great work on Babylonian medicine, frag
ments of which I have published and explained,1 receipts
for the cure of diseases, which scarcely differ from those
that would be prescribed to-day, are mingled with charms
and spells for driving away the demons of sickness.
The sick man, in fact, was given his choice between a
scientific treatment and a recourse to the old system of
the primitive " medicine-man;" and it was left to his faith
or superstition to determine whether he would employ
the regular practitioner or his spiritual predecessor the
exorcist-priest. Thus in the middle of a list of various
medicines, carefully prepared from different ingredients
and mixed with date-wine or water, we find an alter
native spell, which the patient was instructed to " place
on the big toe of the left foot," and there cause it to
remain. The spell was as follows :

" 0 wind, my mother, wind, wind, ruler of the gods art thou, wind
among the storm-gods !

Zeitschrift fur Keilscliriftforschung, ii. 1, 3.

318 LECTURE V.

Yea, thou makest the water1 to stream down (tutsitsa), and with
the gods thy brothers liftest up the stream (ctsits) of thy
wisdom."

'Now these two verses are introduced by a word which
was read en in Accadian, siptu in Assyrian, and had the
meaning of " spell" or " incantation." The same word
introduces also a certain number of the hymns to the
gods, and thus throws light on the object of their quota
tion and use. They were, in fact, spells, and the sacred-
ness with which they were invested was due to the fact
that they were so.2

We now have an explanation of two further facts
which would otherwise be puzzling. On the one hand,
by the side of the hymns to the gods there exist texts
which agree with the hymns in form and character, but
differ from them in being addressed, like the medical
spell I have just quoted, to an inferior order of super
natural beings. On the other hand, the place of a hymn
may be taken by a legendary poem or a portion of a
legendary poem. The transformation of the god Zn into
a bird, which I cited in the last Lecture, is an example of
this. If the legendary poem had to do with the divine
powers who were to be invoked or whose wrath had to
be deprecated, its use as a spell was as efficacious as
that of a hymn. Our own folk-lore shows that nothing
comes amiss to the inventor of popular spells ; the Lord's
Prayer or a verse from the Bible are as serviceable in

1 Literally, " the urine," which indicates the object of the spell.

2 The hymns to the Sun-god of Sippara, composed by Semitic priests,
form, however, an exception to this rule. The introductory word siptu
with them merely means " to be recited," its old signification having
come in time to take this meaning upon itself.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALDJSA. 319

curing disease or in removing the curse of a witch as the
most time-honoured combination of unintelligible words.

The relation between the magical texts and the hymns
of ancient Babylonia is now, therefore, clear. In many
cases, at least, the hymns formed part of the magical
texts; they were the mystical incantations around the
recitation of which the rites prescribed in the texts were
intended to revolve. The magical text was not complete
without the repetition of a form of words as well as a
direct appeal to the names of certain supernatural beings ;
and the form of words was in many instances furnished
by hymns to the gods or analogous kinds of composition.

It is not only the magical texts, however, in which we
find the hymns embedded and prefaced by the significant
word siptUj " incantation." They are still more nume
rous in the ritual texts — in the texts, that is to say, which
describe the religious ceremonies the Babylonian was
called upon to perform. These ceremonies had for the
most part the same end and object as the magical texts ;
they were not so much a communion with the deities of
heaven, as an attempt to compel them by particular rites
and words to relieve the worshipper from trouble, or to
bestow upon him some benefit. Divine worship, in short,
was a performance rather than an act of devotion, and
upon the correctness of the performance depended entirely
its efficacy. The mispronunciation of a single word, the
omission to tie a knot at the right moment, would inva
lidate the whole ceremony and render its repetition neces
sary. The ritual, therefore, was a sort of acted magic,
and it is consequently not surprising that the hymns
should play the same part in it as they did in the incan
tations of the magical texts.

320 LECTURE V.

It follows from all this that many of the magical texts
are, like the ritual texts, later than many of the hymns.
The fact must necessarily introduce some modification
into Lenormant's theory of the origin of the sacred books
of Chaldsea.

In the second place, not only the hymns, but even the
magical texts are at times composed in Semitic Baby
lonian only. There is no trace of an Accadian original
of any kind whatever. And not only is this the case,
but these purely Semitic hymns occasionally glide into
what is neither more nor less than unadulterated magic.
Here is a specimen of one, which begins with an address
to the Sun-god full of deep feeling and exalted thought,
and finally passes into an incantation equally full of dull
bathos and debasing superstition : l

" 0 Sun-god, king of heaven and earth, director of things above

and below,
O Sun-god, thou that clothest the dead with life, delivered by thy

hands,

Judge unbribed, director of mankind,
the mercy is supreme of him who is the lord over difficulty (HI

namratsit),

bidding son and offspring to come forth, light of the world,
creator of all thy universe, the Sun-god art thou !
O Sun-god, when the ban (mamii) for many days
is bound behind me and there is no deliverer,
expulsion of the evil and of the sickness of the flesh is brought

about (by thee) ;
among mankind, the flock of the god Ner, whatever be their

names, he selects me :

1 S 949, Obv. The upper part of the tablet is lost. All that remains
of it are the two last lines : " He clothes with life, and to the blessed
hands of my god and my goddess for grace and life entrust me." Then
comes a line of separation, and the hymn to Samas is introduced by the
word siptu.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 321

" after trouble fill me with rest,

and day and night I will stand undarkened.
In the anguish of my heart and the sickness of my flesh I was
bowed down.

0 father supreme, I am debased and walk to and fro.
With scourges1 and in expiation I beat myself.

My littleness (?) I know not, the sin I have committed I knew not.

1 am small and he is great ;
The walls of my god may I pass.

O bird, stand still and hear the hound !

O Sun-god, stand still and hear me !

Overpower the name of the evil ban that has been created,

whether the ban of my father, or the ban of my begetter,

or the ban of the seven branches of the house of my father,

or the ban of my family and my slaves,

or the ban of my free-born women and concubines,

or the ban of the dead and living, or the ban of the adult (?) and

the suckling,

or the ban of my father and of him who is not my father,
For father and mother I pronounce the spell ; and for brother and

child I pronounce the spell.
For friend and neighbour I pronounce the spell, and for labourer

and workman I pronounce the spell
For the field thou hast made and thy pasturage I pronounce the

spell.

May the name of my god be a father where there is no justice.
To mankind, the flock of the god Ner, whatever be their names,

who are in field and city,
speak, 0 Sun-god, mighty lord, and let the evil ban be at rest."

1 Kur i ; so in W. A. I. iv. 7, 4 : " the incantation is laid as a scourge
(kuru) upon his back." The Accadian equivalent was luba (sometimes
written with the determinative prefix AL, "W. A. I. v. 16. 24, 25), which
is also translated by the Assyrian sidhtum (Heb. sJiodh). Sadi was
another Accado-Sumerian equivalent (iv. 1, 42). The word is expressed
ideographically ("cord-hand-cutting," and "cutting cord") in v. 14.
54, 55, where we also find mention of " the scourge," sa ina tabqirti
nadu, "which is used in penal examination" (Heb. biqqoreth). Tim
ideographic equivalent of the latter is " rope-length (^areZa)-making."
Rappu is further the Assyrian rendering of the ideographic compounds
"rope-skiii-cutting" and "rope-hand-cutting" (v. 14. 57, 58).

Y

322 LECTURE V.

Here the hymn to the Sun-god is made a vehicle for
removing the ban or " curse" that has fallen on the sick
man. The beliefs which produced the magical texts
must still have been active, although the hymn belongs
to a late period of Babylonian history ; the old doctrine
of an inexorable fate, even if degraded into a belief in
the witch's art, still existed along with the worship of a
god who restored the dead to life and was " supreme in
mercy to those that were in trouble." "We have only to
turn to our modern newspapers to discover how slowly
such primaeval beliefs die out, and how long they may
linger among the uneducated and superstitious by the
side of the most exalted faiths and the mightiest triumphs
of inductive science. The fact that one text is magical,
while another contains a hymn to the deity, does not of
itself prove the relative ages of the two documents.

Then, thirdly, it has become increasingly manifest that
a good many of the so-called Accadian texts are not
Accadian in their origin. As I pointed out several years
ago,1 the old Accado-Sumerian language was learned by
the Semitic Babylonians as Latin was learned by the medi
aeval monks, and for much the same reasons. It was the
language of the oldest sacred texts ; it was also the early
language of law; and both priests and lawyers were
accordingly interested in its preservation and use. What
happened to Latin in the Middle Ages had already hap
pened to Accadian in Babylonia. The monks spoke and
wrote in a language which was Latin indeed, but which
had lost its classical purity ; monkish Latin was full of
modern words and idioms, and its grammar was not

1 Babylonian Literature, pp. 64, 71, 72.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD2EA. 323

always scrupulously accurate. On the other hand, it
contributed multitudes of words, and even forms of
expression, to the languages of every-day life that were
spoken around it, and the words were frequently modified
to suit the pronunciation and genius of the languages that
borrowed them, just as the modern words which monkish
Latin had itself adopted were furnished with classical
terminations and construed in a classical fashion. The
case was precisely the same in ancient Chaldoea. Here,
too, there was a monkish Accadian, both spoken and
written, some of which would have shocked the Accadian
speakers of an earlier age. The literati of the court
of Sargon of Accad had been partly Accadian, partly
Semitic ; the Accadian scribes wrote and spoke Semitic,
the Semitic scribes wrote and spoke Accadian. The
result was necessarily a large amount of lending and
borrowing upon both sides, and the growth of an arti
ficial literary language which maintained its ground
for centuries. The way for the rise of this artificial
dialect had already been prepared by the long contact
there had been between the two chief languages of primi
tive Chaldeea. When two languages thus exist side by
side — like Welsh, for example, by the side of English —
they will borrow one from another, the language of supe
rior culture and organisation being that which exerts the
greatest influence. The pupils will imitate the speech of
their masters in art and science even if, as in the case of
Greece and Eome, the masters in art and science are the
subjects in political power.

From a very early epoch, therefore, possibly before the
separation of the Semitic family, the old agglutinative
dialects of Chaldsea had been influencing their Semitic

Y 2

324 LECTURE V.

neighbours. The work carried on at the court of Sargon
was accordingly but a continuation of an older process.
But it was distinguished from the older process in two
ways. It was the work of cultivated men, working upon
literary models with a definite object in view. It was,
moreover, a work that was carried on under Semitic
patronage and supremacy, with the necessary result that
in the new artificial language the influence of Semitic
thought and speech upon the decaying speech of pre-
Semitic Accad tended constantly to become greater. The
Accadian texts, which were first composed by Semitic
scribes, and subsequently handed down through genera
tions of Semitic copyists, could not fail to show their
origin and history plainly stamped upon their face.

And such is actually the case as regards a good many
of the texts which in the early days of Accadian study
could not be distinguished from the genuine productions
of Accadian writers. It was as yet impossible to separate
classical from monkish Accadian ; to determine whether
the Semitic text were a translation of an older Accadian
one, or whether the Accadian was a literary rendering of
a Semitic original. Even now, with all the progress that
has been made during the last few years in our know
ledge of the pre- Semitic dialects of Chaldsea, it is not
always easy to decide the question. It is not enough to
show that the Accadian text contains Semitic words or
idioms. The words may have been introduced by copy
ists ; while what we imagine to be Semitic idioms may
really be imitations of earlier Accadian modes of speech,
borrowed when the ancestors of the Semitic family still
lived together in their tents by the western banks of the
Euphrates. Apart from the monuments of Babylonia

THE SACKED BOOKS OF CHALD^IA. 325

and Assyria, we have no records of Semitic speech which
reach back even approximately to that remote epoch
when the dialects which afterwards became the languages
of Assyria, of Aram and of Phoenicia, were still spoken
within the limits of a single community, and when that
community was still leading the life of the Bedouin of
to-day. It is always possible that words and forms of
expression which we believe to be distinctively Semitic
may, after all, have had an Accadian origin ; before this
can be settled, it will be necessary to exhume more
monuments which, like those of Tel-loh, belong to the
pre- Semitic era, and to subject the non- Semitic language
in which they are written to a searching examination.1

Enough now, however, is known about the charac
teristic features of pure and unadulterated Accado-Su-
merian to enable us to assign most of the hymns and
magical texts to their true origin, and to determine
whether their parentage is Semitic or Accadian. Not
unfrequently the conclusions which have been arrived at
on philological grounds are confirmed by the contents of
the texts. Texts which refer to Semitic deities or to
Semitic sanctuaries disclose at once their real age and
source. It is equally impossible to refer to an early date
compositions which breathe a philosophical spirit, or are
in accord with the Semitic conceptions of the divine
government of the world. The only question is, to how

1 Arabic is of little assistance in settling the question, since our
knowledge of it is so recent that it is impossible to say in many cases
whether the lexical and idiomatic points of agreement between it and
the North Semitic languages may not be due to borrowing. Aramaean
tribes have lived in immediate proximity to the original speakers of
Arabic from very early times, and must have lent many words, if not
idioms, to their neighbours.

326 LECTURE V.

late a period such compositions belong; whether, for
example, the account of the Creation in days, which
bears so curious a resemblance to the first chapter of
Genesis, goes back to the epoch of Khammuragas, or is,
as I believe, a product of the age of Assur-bani-pal.

But even when we have determined the relative date
and origin of a particular composition, our difficulties are
by no means over. An ancient literature like that of
Babylonia must necessarily contain comparatively little
that is original. Most of the works that have come down
to us are based on older literary productions, and are
often mere centos of earlier compositions. The great
Epic of Gisdhubar is little more in its present form than
a redaction of earlier poems relating to the Herakles of
Erech. It is full of episodes like that of the Deluge,
which have no very close connection with the main
subject of the work. And the episode itself may be
pieced together out of more than one earlier poem. Thus
the story of the Deluge shows clear traces of having been
compounded out of at least two older narratives, in one
of which the catastrophe was ascribed to the Sun-god, in
the other to Bel (Mul-lil). The Descent of Istar into
Hades, again, begins with a description of the infernal
world, which, with a few slight differences of expression,
is found again in the sixth book of the Epic ; a com
parison of the two passages goes to show that the authors
of both have alike copied the description from, an earlier
source. The Descent of Istar, indeed, abounds with pas
sages which are plainly borrowed from other poems, and
whose richly poetical language stands out in marked
contrast to the dull and prosaic character of their setting ;
while its concluding lines have little connection with

THE SACEED BOOKS OF CHALILEA. o27

what precedes them, and are obviously an extract from
a separate work. The authors of the penitential psalms
are fond of adding to their productions a litany of varying
length, in which the names of certain divinities are in
voked ; the litany was a common possession which existed
in an independent form, and had been handed down from
an early period. Even the hymns are sometimes put
together out of older materials, like certain of the Old
Testament psalms ; not only do the same phrases and
lines recur, but whole passages as well. It is the same
with the magical texts. Here, too, we have repetitions
and borrowing ; here, too, we have older fragments incor
porated into later texts.

It will be seen from this how much remains to be
done before the sacred books of ancient Babylonia can
be made fully to tell their tale, and to what an extent
the first theory about their origin and history must
require modification. In its main outlines, nevertheless,
the theory first sketched by the brilliant insight of
Lenormant still continues true ; it is only in its details
that it needs correction and improvement.

The magical texts formed the earliest sacred literature
of Chaldsea. This fact remains unshaken. They reach
back to a period when the Semitic conception of a
supreme Baal was utterly unknown — when, indeed, there
was no definite conception of a god at all. The " crea
ting" deity of later Accadian belief had not yet emerged
from the religious consciousness of the Chaldsean. The
inhabitant of Babylonia was as yet in the purely Shaman-
istic stage of religious development. The world about
him was peopled by supernatural powers, each of which
was to him a si or " spirit." But it was not a spirit in

LECTURE V.

our sense of the word, nor in the sense in which the
term was used by the Semitic scribes of a later day.
The ei was simply that which manifested life, and the
test of the manifestation of life was movement. Every
thing that moved, or seemed to move, was endowed with
life, for only in this way could primitive man explain
the fact. He himself moved and acted because he had
life ; life, therefore, was the cause of movement. Hence
the objects and forces of nature were all assigned a zi
or spirit. The arrow that flew through the air, the
stone that struck and injured, the heavenly bodies that
moved across the sky, the fire that blazed up from the
ground devouring all that fell in its way, had all alike
their spirits. The spirits were as innumerable as the
objects and forces which surrounded the Chaldsean, and
as mysterious and invisible as his own spirit or life.

In this phase of faith the moral element was wholly
wanting. The Chaldsean had not yet entered the Garden
of Eden, and eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. The visible things of nature may benefit or
injure; but their benefits and injuries seem altogether
capricious and accidental, entirely independent of the
actions and thoughts of man. The same stone which has
killed a man to-day may help to build his son's house
to-morrow; the fire which scorches to death will also
cook the food to sustain life. In each event, all seems
determined by blind chance ; the spirits of nature may
live and move, but they have no passions, no emotions.
If their invisible spirits are to be influenced, it must be
by other means than appeals to their love, their anger,
their jealousy or their pride.

Shamanism accordingly implies, not a priesthood, but

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALDyEA. 329

a body of " medicine-men," or exorcists, who know the
spells whereby the spirits of nature can be compelled
either to cease from injuring or to ill-treat the foe.
"Whether the medicine-men of primaeval Chaldsea had to
undergo any initiatory course of training, or whether
the profession were open to all alike, we do not know ;
our records do not reach back to the remote period of
pure Shamanism, the magical texts being merely sur
vivals which in their present form belong to a later time.
It is this class of exorcists, however, which distin
guishes the early Shamanism of Chaldsea from what Dr.
Tylor has termed simple Animism. Shamanism, is, in
fact, organised Animism * Animism controlled and regu
lated by a body of exorcists who take the place of the
priesthood of a higher cult. It was doubtless the exist
ence of disease which first called this body of exorcists
into being. The prevention and cure of disease is the main
object of the magical texts and incantations. Disease
was looked upon, as it still is in many parts of the uncivi
lized world, as possession by a malevolent spirit. Just as
an external wound might be caused by a piece of stone
or metal, so it was inferred an internal malady must be
caused by an invisible agent of a similar kind — that is,
by the spirit of the stone or metal. The same means
that were adapted for getting rid of the visible stone and
metal would be suitable for getting rid of their invisible
spirits. There is no evidence to show that the exorcists
of Chaldsea ever professed to extract pieces of actual
stone or metal from the body of the sick, like the medi
cine-men of Australia or America ; but they claimed by
their spells to expel the spirits which enabled these pieces
of stone and metal to afflict and injure. Listen, for

330 LECTURE V.

instance, to the opening words of the great collection of
Chaldsean magical texts :

" The evil god, the evil demon, the demon of the field, the demon of
the mountain, the demon of the sea, the demon of the tomb, the evil
spirit, the dazzling fiend, the evil wind, the assaulting wind which
strips off the clothing of the body like an evil demon, — conjure, 0
spirit of heaven ! conjure, 0 spirit of earth ! . . . . That which is mis-
formed, that which is diseased, that which is racked (with pain), even
a diseased muscle, a constricted muscle, a swollen muscle, an aching
muscle, a painful muscle, a broken muscle, an injured muscle, — conjure,
0 spirit of heaven ! conjure, 0 spirit of earth !

The sickness of the entrails, a sick heart, faintness of the heart,
disease, disease of the bile, headache, violent vomiting, a broken blood
vessel (?), disease of the kidneys, difficult miction, painful sickness
which cannot be removed, a dream of ill omen, — conjure, 0 spirit of
heaven ! conjure, 0 spirit of earth !

Him who is the possessor of the likeness of another, the evil face, the
evil eye, the evil mouth, the evil tongue, the evil lips, the evil breath,
— conjure, 0 spirit of heaven ! conjure, 0 spirit of earth ! . . . .

The painful fever, the virulent fever, the fever which quits not a
man, the fever-demon who leaves not (the body), the fever unremov
able, the baleful fever, — conjure, 0 spirit of heaven ! conjure, 0 spirit
of earth !

The painful plague, the virulent plague, the plague which quits not
a man, the plague-demon who leaves not (the body), the plague unre
movable, the baleful plague, — conjure, 0 spirit of heaven ! conjure, 0
spirit of earth !"

The exorcisms for driving away the spirits of disease
gradually introduced a moral element into the character
of the old spirits of nature. But the moral element was
wholly on the dark side. The spirits of disease were
essentially evil and malevolent. In so far as human
passions could be ascribed to them, the passions were those
of the wicked, not of the good. The worship of the spirits
of nature thus tended to become a religion of fear.

Side by side, however, with the growing belief in the
malevolence of the spirits of nature, there existed the

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA.

totemism of which I have spoken in the last Lecture.
Animals, as well as other objects, had each their special
spirit, and these spirits naturally shared the feelings
and passions which moved the animals to which they
belonged. The sacred animals were regarded as moral
agents, like men; the ox, whose labours benefited mankind,
protected his worshipper from the attacks of evil ; while
the fish which supplied the inhabitants of Eridu with
food, also brought to them the elements of culture and
civilisation. In this way the Shamanism of earlier and
ruder times began to pass into a higher form of creed ;
the exorcist approximated more and more to the priest,
and the spells he used tended to recognise the distinction
between good and evil in the world of spirits as well as
in the world of men.

It was at this point that cosmogonic speculations first
exercised an influence upon the religion of the Chaldsean
states. The Babylonian began to generalise and to sum
up his individual impressions of outward phenomena in
wider and more abstract ideas. Earth and heaven took
the place of the individual objects and forces whose
sphere of action was in the one or the other ; the spirits
of these separate phenomena were subordinated to the
spirits of the earth and the sky. The stereotyped con
clusion of the old Accadian exorcism, as we have just
heard, is, " Conjure, 0 spirit of heaven ! conjure, 0 spirit
of earth!" The earth out of whose bosom the agricultu
rist received the bounties of life, the heavens from which
the fertilising rain and dew dropped upon the ground,
and the rays of the sun warmed all nature into activity,
became the supreme powers whose spirits dominated
over all others and demanded the reverence of man.

332 LECTURE V.

Unlike the malevolent spirits of disease, the great cosmo-
gonic spirits were essentially beneficent ; the moral con
ceptions of Chaldeean faith were enlarged by the belief in
the existence of good as well as of evil spirits, and the
superiority of the good to the evil. It was an immense
step in advance, and it corresponds with the time when the
religious literature of Babylonia first commences with the
oldest surviving magical texts. The earliest portions of
the latter belong to the age when the crude Shamanism of
the past had been tempered and modified by the first
beginnings of a theory of the world.

From this point onward we can trace the further de
velopment of the older creed. The struggle between
good and evil had already begun in the mind of the
Chaldsean thinker. The supernatural beings he wor
shipped were now divided, for the most part, into two
hostile camps. On the one side stood the demons of
disease and nightmare; on the other, the great cosmo-
gonic powers of earth and heaven. It is true that the
terrible spirits of disease, who loved the darkness of night
and the solitary places of the wilderness, were not yet
consciously conceived as demons, but the moment was
not far off when such would be the case. Light and
darkness now stood opposed to one another in the spiritual
as well as in the physical world. The old medicine-man
was fast becoming a priest.

The introduction of cosmological ideas and speculations
into Chaldeean religion brought with it two results. First
of all, there grew out of it the conception of creating
gods. We have already had occasion to observe the
essential distinction that existed between the Accadian
and Semitic conceptions of the universe: with the one,

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 333

all things were made ; with, the other, they were begotten.
The Semitic Baal was a father ; the Accadian divinity a
creator. According to the Semite, the heavens and the
earth were carved out of a pre-existent chaos ; according
to the Accadian, the heavens and the earth were them
selves primordial powers, maintaining an eternal struggle
with the chaos of darkness and anarchy. The temporary
triumph of chaos means the irruption of anarchy into
the fair order of nature — the destructive hurricane, the
devastating tempest, the darkening eclipse. The return
of light and sunshine, of bright skies and germinating
seeds, marks the victory gained over the encroaching
forces of the lower world.

The earth and the sky became the first creators, the
first gods. It is they who create all the good things
which man enjoys below, including man himself. The
spirit of the earth and the spirit of the heaven thus de
veloped into creating gods. But it was before the old
habits of thought and expression could be quite eradicated
from the Chaldsean mind. The spirits which had de
veloped into gods were themselves provided with spirits ;
there was a spirit of Ea and Dav-kina, of Ana and Mul-
lil, as well as of water and earth, of heaven and hell.
When the gods took upon them human shape, these
spirits were regarded as similar to the spirits of indi
vidual men; and the functions and attributes of the
human spirit were reflected upon the spirits of the gods.
At the outset, however, it was with the animal and not
with the human world that the new gods were associated.
They were, in fact, confounded with the old totems. Just
as the heavenly bodies, which seemed to move of their

LECTURE V.

own accord like living beings, were identified with the
sacred animals, so too the spirits of earth and heaven,
of water and air, to whom a creative power had been
given, were similarly identified with them. The god
was a beast before he became a man, and the spirit that
moved him was that of the brute.

In the second place, the deification of the spirits of
earth and heaven necessarily brought with it the deifica
tion of other spirits which resembled them in character
and power. The test of supernaturalism — of the exist
ence of a spirit — was the power of movement possessed
by an object or a force of nature; this power now
became itself the supernatural being, the god or spirit.
The spirit of the moon, for example, developed into a
god ; but the god was abstracted from the visible moon
itself, and identified with the creative force of the lunar
orb which manifested itself in motion. The new god
might in turn be abstracted from the creative force, more
especially if he were assimilated to the sacred steer ; in
this case the creative force would become his spirit, in
no way differing, it will be seen, from the spirit that
was believed to reside in man.

We have now reached the culminating point of the
old Accadian religion. Spirits innumerable still exist,
but they are controlled and overawed by creative gods.
The gods represent the order and law of the universe
embodied by the sabba, or " fate," to which even the gods
themselves must submit. Over against them are the
malevolent spirits of disease, of chaos and of darkness ;
while beside them are other spirits which still retain
their primitive character of moral indifference, neither

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALDJEA. 335

good nor bad, though some might approximate more to
the good and others to the bad. But gods and spirits
alike were amenable to the spells and exorcisms used by
the sorcerer-priest, for a priest he had now become. By
his magical words he could remove the sickness which
was caused by demoniac possession, or bewitch the person
and the property of his enemy; he could compel the
gods to listen to his petition and to perform his com
mands. In his hands and on his lips was the power of
the terrible sabba, which even the gods were forced to
obey. The sorcerer was still the intermediary between
mankind and the spiritual world.

But, as I have just said, he had lost much of his old
character. Among the spells he employed were hymns
which imply a more advanced cult than that of mere
magic. Indeed, the very conception of a creative deity
necessarily brought with it a service of praise and adora
tion and the formation of a fixed ritual. A beneficent
god required another kind of worship than that which
was appropriate to the non-moral spirits of Shamanism.
"When the spirit of heaven became Arm, temples were
raised in his honour, and the worshippers who entered
them required something else than that the priest should
"conjure" the object of his cult. We leave the era
which witnessed the rise of the magical texts, and enter
on the era of the hymns.

The Penitential Psalms, of which I shall speak further
on, frequently have a sort of litany attached to them,
written in Accadian only, and invoking the aid of certain
deities under their pre-Semitic names or titles. The
litany was an old heirloom, selections from which were
taken by the authors of the psalms and added to their

336 LECTURE V.

compositions. One of those translated by Dr. Zimmern1
concludes as follows :

" 0 my god, the lord of prayer, may my prayer address thee !

0 my goddess, the lady of supplication, may my supplication
address thee !

O Mato (Matu), the lord of the mountain, may my prayer address
thee!

O Gubarra, lady of Eden, may my prayer address thee !

O lord of heaven and earth, lord of Eridu, may my supplication
address thee !

0 Merodach (Asar-mulu-duga), lord of Tin-tir (Babylon), may my
prayer address thee !

0 wife of him, (the princely offspring (1) of heaven and) earth,
may my supplication address thee !

0 (messenger of the spirit) of the god who proclaims (the good
name), may my prayer address thee !

O (bride, first-born of) UrasC?), may my supplication address thee !

O (lady, who binds the hostile (1) mouth), may my prayer address
thee !

O (exalted one, the great goddess, my lady .Nana), may my sup
plication address thee !

May it say to thee : * (Direct thine eye kindly unto me).'

May it say to thee : ' (Turn thy face kindly to me).'

(May it say to thee : ' Let thy heart rest.')

(May it say to thee : 'Let thy liver be quieted.')

(May it say to thee : * Let thy heart, like the heart of a mother
who has borne children, be gladdened.')

('As a mother who has borne children, as a father who has begot
ten a child, let it be gladdened')."

The litany belongs to a period considerably later than
that which witnessed the rise and first collection of the
magical texts. It is written in the Accadian dialect of
north Babylonia, which exhibits the old Sumerian of the
south in an advanced stage of decay, and further shows
traces of contact with a Semitic language. The deities

1 From Haupt's AkkadiscJie Keihchrifttextc, pp. 116 sq.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD.EA. 337

whose names are invoked belong to different parts of
Babylonia, and point to a time when not only the separate
states of Chaldeea had begun to recognise a common pan
theon, but when northern and southern Babylonia had
already been united into a single empire. Nevertheless,
the litany is earlier than the age of Sargon of Accad and
the supremacy of the Semitic population. Though Mero-
dach has already migrated from Eridu to Babylon, still
referred to under its old Accadian name of Din-Tir, the
Sun-god of Sippara and Accad is altogether unknown.
There is no allusion to either city or to the divinities
they adored. !N"ana herself, the queen of Erech, is not
yet known as Istar, and the Tasmit of a later day is
" the bridal goddess, the first-born of Uras."

We are still, therefore, lingering on the verge of the
pre-Semitic epoch. The Semite may be in the land, but
the official religion does not as yet recognise him. The
difference, however, between the religious ideas of the
litany and those which inspired the old magical texts is
immense. A whole age of religious development lies
between them. The fundamental conception of the pre
ceding period, it is true, still survives ; the deities must
be influenced by the spoken word of their worshipper.
But the spoken word has ceased to be the spell or incan
tation ; it has become a prayer and supplication. Its
efficacy depends no longer on the exorcisms of a medicine
man, but on the faithful petitions of the worshipper
himself. And along with this change in the nature of
the cult has gone a corresponding change in the divine
beings to whom the cult is dedicated. They have become
gods, bound together in a common brotherhood, like the
brotherhood of the cities over whose fortunes they preside.

338 LECTUKE V.

Babylonia possesses not only gods; it possesses a pantheon,
an Olympus, as well.

It was, of course, only among the more cultivated
classes that this newer and higher conception of the divine
government of the world was likely to be found. The
masses, doubtless, still clung to their old superstitions,
their old Shamanism. The formation of magical texts,
therefore, never ceased. The older texts continued to be
interpolated until their antiquity at last threw such a halo
of holiness around them that it was considered impious
to tamper with their words. Other texts of a similar
character were composed, which in course of time came
to receive as much reverence as the more ancient collec
tion. Far down into Semitic times, exorcisms and incan
tations continued to be written, and to receive the impri
matur of the official priesthood. They even entered largely
into the ritual of the temples. But the sanctity attached
to them became fainter and fainter as years went on.
Although the sorcerer maintained his ground among the
uneducated multitude, like the witch in modern times,
the spells with which he served himself were simply
means for curing the bite of a scorpion, and such-like
necessities of popular medicine. They were dissociated
from the worship of the gods and degraded to vulgar
uses. Even in medicine the cultivated Babylonian gen
tlemen preferred to employ the drugs prescribed by
scientific practitioners ; the spells were left to the igno
rant and superstitious. The old collections of magical
texts, indeed, remained among the sacred books of the
nation ; but this was on account of their antiquity, and
not because they any longer expressed the religious
feelings of the day. The litany at the end of the peniten-

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALDyEA. 339

tial psalms marks the beginning of a new era in religious
thought.

This era is represented by the hymns to the gods. Dr.
Hommel has pointed out that the hymns fall into two main
classes. There are, firstly, the hymns which show no
trace of contact with the magical texts, and, secondly, other
hymns which are either partly magical in character or else
are introduced by the significant word en (siptu\ " incan
tation." These latter hymns emanate for the most part
from Eridu and its neighbourhood, and bring Merodach
before us as carrying out the behests of his father Ea for
the good of man. Most of them, moreover, are dedicated
to those older divinities who, like Gibil the fire-god, were
eclipsed by the more human deities of the later cult.
But the division must not be pressed too far. The intro
ductory en, " incantation," merely indicates that the hymn
is of sufficiently early date to be incorporated in a magical
text, or that it was selected as a spell, like the Lord's
Prayer or the fragments of Latin which have served the
same object in modern times. It is of importance, how
ever, to observe whether the hymn is of a semi-magical
character, like that to the Fire-god which I have quoted
in a former Lecture, or whether it was originally alto
gether independent of the use to which it has been put.
In the first case, we may confidently assign it to the period
when Eridu was still the religious capital of Chaldeea,
and the faith of the people was only emerging out of it3
earlier Shamanistic phase. In the other case, where the
hymn itself is free from all taint of magic and Shamanistic
superstition, we may as confidently ascribe it to a later
date. Its precise age will depend upon that of the text
in which it is embodied. If the latter is one of those

z2

340 LECTURE V.

late survivals which proved how deeply rooted the belief
in magic and witchcraft was among the lower strata of the
population, the hymn or fragment of the hymn which is
incorporated in it may be of almost any period. To deter
mine its age more exactly, we must have recourse to the
language in which it is written and the other indications
of date it may contain. Sometimes these may point to an
early epoch, at other times to a comparatively recent one.
The hymns to the Sun-god of Sippara afford a fixed
point of departure for settling the relative antiquity of
the hymns. They form a separate class by themselves,
and were part of the daily service performed by the
priests in the temple of Samas. It is plain, therefore,
that they had been collected for liturgical use, and had
been invested with a sacred character. There were
hymns that had to be recited at sunrise and sunset, or
on the special festivals held in honour of the god. The
individual hymns had doubtless been composed on dif
ferent occasions and at different times, and it is possible
that they had been revised and altered more than once
before they were put together as a single whole. But
whatever may have been the respective ages of the indi
vidual hymns, they were all alike of Semitic origin.
They all belong to the epoch when Sippara and Accad
were ruled by Semitic princes, and were a centre and
focus of Semitic influence. It is true that the hymns
are provided with an Accadian text, which is followed,
line by line, by the Semitic rendering, as is the case with
the other bilingual texts of early date. But it is equally
true that the Accadian text is really a translation of the
Semitic. It may have been made by Accadian scribes ;
it may have been made, and more probably was made,

THE SACKED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 341

by Semitic scribes, like the Accadian texts which ema
nated from the library of Assur-bani-pal ; but it is not
original. The Semitic words and idioms it contains bear
witness to its secondary character. There is only one
period in the history of Sippara, of which we know, to
which such a work is attributable. This is the age of
Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. The pie-Semitic epoch
of northern Babylonia was but just passing away; the
sacred texts, the hymns to the gods, the older incanta
tions, were all in the agglutinative language of the first
inhabitants of the country. Though the ancient Sun-god
of Sippara had become the Semitic Samas, it was natural
to suppose that he would be better pleased with the lan
guage in which the spirits and deities of ChaldaBa had
been addressed than with the vulgar speech of every-day
life. Like the monk of the Middle Ages, accordingly,
who composed his prayers and hymns in Latin, the priest
of Samas addressed his god in the older and more sacred
tongue. The sentiment, the expression, might be Semitic,
but the form in which it must be clothed before it could
be acceptable to the divinity was Accadian.

In a later age there was no longer the same strong
motive for assimilating the hymns to the Sun -god to
those addressed to the more purely Accadian deities of
Babylonia. The Semitic language b.ecame first literary
and then a fit vehicle of devotion. Not only were magical
texts written in it, but hymns also, without any endeavour
to render them into the obsolete Accadian. Assur-bani-
pal, antiquarian as he was, thinks it no sin to publish
hymns to Nebo and Samas in Semitic only, and the in
vocations addressed to the gods by Nebuchadnezzar and
his successors are in the same Semitic language as the

342 LECTURE V.

rest of their inscriptions. The translation of the hymns
to Samas into Accadian presupposes a time when the
Accadian influence was still powerful, and when Accadian
was still believed to be the language of the gods.

If, then, we can assign the hymns to Samas of Sippara
to the age of Sargon of Accad, it becomes more easy to
find an approximate date for the hymns to the other
great gods of Babylonia. Like the hymns to Samas, we
must suppose them to have belonged to different col
lections employed liturgically in the chief temples of
Chaldsea. We know, indeed, that this was the case as
regards the hymns addressed to Bel-Merodach of Babylon.
"With few exceptions they are bilingual, in Accadian and
Semitic ; and in the larger number of them the Accadian
text is the original. Where this is the case, and the
hymns belong to the sanctuaries of northern Babylonia,
we may consider them older than the age of Sargon. As
the ancient language of the country continued to be
spoken in southern Babylonia long after his time, the
same conclusion cannot be drawn in regard to the hymns
employed there, but it is probable that the majority of
them are quite as early as those of the north.

How far they have come down to us in their original
condition and form it is hard to say. In some instances
we can show that they have been modified and interpo
lated, and analogy would lead us to suppose that such
was generally the case. Nor is it possible to determine
at present whether the collections of sacred hymns used
in the different temples of Babylonia were formed into a
single whole, and thus constituted a sort of Babylonian
Big- Veda, as Lenormant conjectured. It is very probable,
however, that the unification of the country brought with

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD.EA. 343

it a unification of the sacred books used in its several
temples, and that the copies of the hymns we possess
were not made by the scribes of Assur-bani-pal from
the hymn-books of different sanctuaries, but from a com
mon hymn-book in which the special collections had been
grouped together.

At the same time, if such a common hymn-book ever
existed, it must have contained selections only from the
hymn-books of the individual sanctuaries. One of the
few hymns to Nergal, for instance, which we possess,
was, we are told, copied from the service-book of Cutha,1
and this is by no means an isolated example of the kind.
On the other hand, the hymns — or more usually the
fragments of hymns — which are incorporated in the
magical texts, perhaps imply the existence of a sacred
volume which was in common use among the priestly
schools of Babylonia. This is a point which it must be
left to future research to decide.

But whether or not such an authorised collection of
hymns existed for the whole of Chaldasa, it is certain
that a considerable number of the hymns were composed
when the chief cities of Babylonia and their presiding
deities had been, as it were, confederated together. The
matter is, indeed, complicated by our ignorance of the
extent to which the hymns have been altered and inter
polated before their present text was finally fixed; on
the whole, however, it seems pretty evident that Ana,
Mul-lil and Ea, had already been linked together in a
divine brotherhood, and that the other "great gods"
had been assigned their places in a common pantheon,

1 K5268, Rev. 12.

344 LECTURE V.

before a considerable proportion of the hymns had been
composed. A distinct advance had thus been made
beyond the religious conceptions of the litany of the
penitential psalms ; not only are the gods of different
cities invoked side by side, but they are now connected
together in the bonds of a single family. The family
system, in fact, has taken the place of a system of mere
co-ordination.

Now the family system implies an entire change in
the conception of the gods themselves. They cease to
be creators; they become fathers and children. Along
with this change necessarily goes another. The gods
become human. The last vestiges of primitive totemism
fade away, and Merodach is no longer "the bull of
light," the son of " the antelope of the deep," but an
anthropomorphic god, standing in the same relation to
Ea that a human son stands to his human father. Baby
lonian religion had long been tending to regard the gods
as supernatural men ; the introduction of the family
relation completed the work.

The work, however, in its final form bears clear marks
of artificiality. The whole family system, in which the
deities of different states are each given a definite posi
tion, must have been deliberately built up. Family
relationships may grow up naturally among the divinities
worshipped in the same locality or in the colonies sent
out by a mother- state ; where these relationships are
found existing among divinities, originally independent
and each adored as supreme in its own primitive seat of
worship, they must belong to an artificial system, and
be the product of intentional arrangement. Eeligion, in
the hands of its official representatives in Chaldeea, had

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 345

not only passed out of the sphere of simple and spon
taneous belief, it had become organised and reflective —
a subject to be discussed and analysed, to be arranged
and methodised.

Can all this have been the natural and uninterrupted
development of the old pre-Semitic Shamanism ? With
Francois Lenormant, I think not. Between the religion
of the magical texts, of the earlier semi-magical hymns
and of the litanies on the one side, and the religion of
the later hymns on the other, there seems to me to be
an almost impassable gulf, which can be bridged over
only by the assumption of an intrusive foreign element.
What this element must have been we know already.
The Semitic nomads of the western desert in the days
of their barbarism had come into contact with the cul
tured kingdoms and people of the valley of the Euphrates.
At first they were content to be pupils ; eventually they
became masters themselves. The amalgamation of the
two races produced the Babylonian population of later
times, and along with it the history, the civilisation and
the religion of a subsequent era. Berossos expressly notes
that Babylonia was the home of different races ; he might
have added that it was the home also of different faiths.

The Semite sat at the feet of his Accadian Gamaliel
when the crude Shamanism of the latter had passed into
a higher phase of religion, and the creator-gods had been
evolved out of the spirits of the earlier creed. He adopted
the gods, but at the same time he adapted them to his
own notions concerning the divine government of the
world. They became Baalim, so many manifestations of
the supreme deity whose children we are, and who exhi
bits himself to us in the solar energy. The old goddesses,

346 LECTURE Y.

with the exception of Istar, sank to the rank of Ash-
taroth and " mistresses of the gods," mere companions
and doubles of the male divinity.

Now, as I have already tried to point out, the key
stone of Semitic belief was the generative character of
the deity. A language which divided nouns into mascu
lines and f eminines, found it difficult to conceive of a deity
which was not masculine and feminine too. The divine
hierarchy was necessarily regarded as a family, at the
head of which stood " father Bel." If the gods of Accad
were to be worshipped by the Semite, they must first
conform to the requirements of his religious conceptions,
and allow themselves to be grouped together as members
of a single family. All that stood outside the family
were servants and slaves — the hosts of heaven and earth
who performed the behests of their masters, and carried
the messages of Baal to all parts of the universe. The
rest of the supernatural world, if such existed, was rele
gated to the domain of the enemy; it comprised the
empire of chaos and night, which, like the gods of foreign
nations, might at times invade the realms of the Baalim,
only, however, to be beaten back once more into the
outer darkness. The empire of chaos, however, was
really a stranger to genuine Semitic belief; it was a
legacy left by the Accadians, which was assimilated and
adapted by the Semites as best they could. Where the
Semitic faith existed in its full purity, Satan, the adver
sary, himself was but an angel and minister of the Lord,
and the supreme god was the creator alike of good and
evil, of light and darkness.

The rise of Sun-worship at Sippara, the prominence
given to the solar element in Babylonian religion gene-

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 347

rally, the obliteration of the older gods whose attributes
could not be harmonised with those of a Sun-god, and
the identification of deity after deity with the solar Baal,
was again the result of the introduction of Semitic ideas
into the religion of Chaldasa. Perhaps the most striking-
transformation eyer undergone by any object of religious
faith was the conversion of Mul-lil, the lord of the ghost-
world, into a Bel or Baal, the god of light and life.
Such a transformation could not have been produced
naturally ; it needed the grafting of new religious con
ceptions upon an older cult ; it is a sudden change, not
a development.

Equally hard to explain, except by calling in the aid
of a foreign religious element, is the degradation of the
spirits of the primitive faith into demons. We have
traced the process whereby certain of these spirits deve
loped into deities, while others of them were invested
with a distinctly malevolent character ; but they are not
yet demons. The evil spirits who brought disease or
caused eclipse might be the brood of chaos, and therefore
hostile to the gods of light ; but they were all the subjects
of Mul-lil, and even of the sorcerer and the medicine
man. It was the necessity the Semite was under of
accommodating his beliefs to the doctrine of an empire
of chaos that turned them into veritable demons, work
ing for evil against the gods in a world of evil of their
own. Persian dualism was no new thing in Babylonia ;
the gods of good and the spirits of evil had been struggling
there one against the other since the remote days of
Sargon of Accad.1

1 Nothing can be more striking than the following expression in a
prayer to " Ea, Samas and Merodach, the great god?, the supreme

348 LECTURE V.

In what precedes I have, of course, been describing
only the official religion of Babylonia, as it is known to
us from the sacred literature of the country. It was
the religion of the upper classes, of the priesthood and of
the court. What the mass of the people may have be
lieved, and how far they may have participated in the
official cult, we can only guess. The later magical texts
and incantations were condescensions to their necessities
and superstitions, like the legends of the gods which
formed the subject-matter of popular poetry. The differ
ences that exist to-day between the creed of a Spanish
peasant and that of a scientific savant are not greater
than those which existed in Babylonia of old between
the religion of the multitude and that of the school which
resolved the divinities of the popular theology into forms
of the one supreme god.

The magical texts and hymns were not the only sacred
books possessed by the Babylonians. There was yet a
third class of sacred literature — those penitential psalms
to which I have so often alluded. The litany frequently
attached to them belongs, as we have seen, to the pre-
Semitic epoch, though it has been altered from time to
time in later ages. The litany, however, is not written,
like the magical texts and the majority of the hymns, in
the Sumerian dialect of the south, but in the Accadian
of the north. Dr. Hommel is perfectly right in calling
the Accadian of the north neo-Sumerian ; it represents
the Sumerian of the early texts in an advanced stage of

powers who establish the ban," — " the sins of my father and my mother
I saw not ([sd]abi-ya u ummi-ya khidati ul amrd) . . . from darkness I
stepped forth and (became) the soldier of Samas" (ultu edhuti utsav-va
tsab Samas [assaJd?i])) E 278, Obv. 7 — 9.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 349

decay. But this does not prove that it was spoken at a
later period than the Sumerian of the south, or that it is
the direct descendant of the latter dialect. There were
several dialects of the Accadian or pre-Semitic language
of Chaldaea ; one of these gave rise to the Accadian of
northern Babylonia at a time when the Sumerian dialect
in the south still preserved its pristine purity. What
hastened the decay of the northern dialect was its contact
with Semitic. The Semites established themselves in
the northern part of the country long before they settled
in the south. The kingdom of Sargon rose and waned
at Accad more than a thousand years before Sumerian
dynasties ceased to rule in the southern cities. It is not
strange, therefore, if the Accadian of the north decayed
long before its sister dialect of Eridu, borrowing at the
same time Semitic words and modes of expression. It
is in this Accadian of the north that the penitential
psalms are written. They belong neither to the same age
nor to the same city. But they are all distinguished by
the same characteristics, which lend to them a striking
resemblance to the Psalms of the Old Testament. Let us
take one, for example, which has been preserved to us in
a fairly complete condition : l

"The heart of my lord is wroth; may it be appeased !2
May the god whom I know not be appeased !
May the goddess3 whom I know not be appeased !
May the god I know and (the god) I know not be appeased !

1 W.A.I. 4, 10. Zimmern's Busspsalmen, pp. 61 sq.

2 Literally, "return to its place."

3 The Assyrian translation here has Istar instead of Istarit, -which
indicates its antiquity. The expression "whom I know not" means
"whose name I know not." The author of the psalm is uncertain as
to the particular god who has punished him.

350 LECTURE Y.

May the goddess I know and (the goddess) I know not be ap
peased !

May the heart of my god be appeased !

May the heart of my goddess be appeased !

May the god and the goddess I know and I know not be appeased !

May the god who (has been violent against me) be appeased) !

May the goddess (who has been violent against me be appeased) !

The sin that (I sinned I) knew not.

The sin (that I committed I knew not).

A name of blessing (may my god pronounce upon me).

A name of blessing (may the god I know and know not) record
for me.

A name of blessing (may the goddess I know and know not) pro
nounce upon me).

(Pure) food I have (not) eaten.

Clear water I have (not) drunk.

The cursed thing1 of my god unknowingly did I eat ;

The cursed thing of my goddess unknowingly did I trample on.

0 lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great !

O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great !

0 my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great !

O god whom I know and whom I know not, my sins are many,
my transgressions are great !

0 goddess whom I know and whom I know not, my sins are many,
my transgressions are great !

The sin that I sinned I knew not.

The transgression I committed I knew not.

The cursed thing that I ate I knew not.

The cursed thing that I trampled on I knew not.

The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me ;

God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.

The goddess has been violent against me and has put me to grief.

The god whom I know and whom I know not has distressed me.

The goddess whom I know and whom I know not has inflicted
trouble.

1 The Assyrian ikkib, as Mr. Pinches has pointed out, is borrowed
from the Accadian iv-giba, " what is harmful." Ziinmern quotes Haupt's
Texts, p. 119 (6 sq.), "the handmaid eateth the cursed thing, she has
committed the cursed thing." We may compare the words of Gen.
ii. 17, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^A. 351

I sought for help and none took my hand ;

I wept and none stood at my side ;

I cried aloud and there was none that heard me.

I am in trouble and hiding ; I dare not look up.

To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer ;

The feet of my goddess I kiss and water with tears.1

To the god whom I know and whom I know not I utter my prayer.

0 lord, look upon (me ; receive my prayer !)

O goddess, look upon (me ; accept my prayer !)

0 god whom I know (and whom I know not, accept my prayer !)

O goddess whom I know (and whom I know not, accept my

prayer !)

How long, 0 god, (shall I suffer 1)

How long, 0 goddess, (shall thy face be turned from me ?)
How long, 0 god whom I know and know riot, shall the fierceness

(of thy heart continue ?)
How long, 0 goddess whom I know and know not, shall thy

heart in its hostility be [not] appeased 1
Mankind is made to wander and there is none that knoweth.
Mankind, as many as pronounce a name, what do they know ?
Whether he shall have good or ill, there is none that knoweth.
0 lord, destroy not thy servant !

When cast into the water of the ocean (?) take his hand.
The sins I have sinned turn to a blessing.

The transgressions I have committed may the wind carry away.
Strip off my manifold wickednesses as a garment.
O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions ; forgive my

sins !
0 my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions ; forgive

my sins !
0 god whom I know and whom I know not, seven times seven

are my transgressions ; forgive my sins !
0 goddess whom I know and whom I know not, seven times seven

are my transgressions ; forgive my sins !
Forgive my sins ; may thy ban be removed.2

1 See W. A. I. v. 19. 35—38 ; 20. 55 ; ii. 21. 53 ; 24. 45.

2 Zimmern has mistaken the meaning of this passage. In W. A. I
iv. 12. 32, 33, sa-mun-6iUalil is rendered unakkaru. KA-TAR (perhaps
pronounced Itus) is "spoken judgment," "excommunication ;" thus in

352 LECTUKE V.

May thy heart be appeased as the heart of a mother who has borne

children.
As a mother who has borne children, as a father who has begotten

them, may it be appeased !

COLOPHON. — Psalm of 65 lines ; a tablet for every god.
Its repetition ensures my peace.2
Like its original copied and published : palace of Assur-bani-pal,

king of legions, king of Assyria."

It is only necessary to read the psalm to see in it
distinct traces of contact on the part of the Accadians
with Semitic thought. The god cannot be addressed
alone ; the goddess necessarily stands at his side. The
introspection, moreover, which the psalm reveals is hardly
reconcilable with the religious conceptions presupposed
by the magical texts and the earlier hymns. The con
sciousness of sin is a new feature in Chaldean religion,
and belongs to the age that saw the rise of poems like
that on the Deluge, which ascribed the sufferings of man
kind to their wrong-doing. Hitherto the evil that existed
in the world had not been given a moral significance.
It was due to the action of malevolent spirits or the
decrees of inexorable fate rather than to the wickedness
of man, and it was removed by spells and ceremonies
which occasioned the interference of the god of wisdom
and his son Merodach. At most, it was considered a
punishment for offences against the divine order of the

1253. Rev. 1, 2, we have ina KA-GA-ka lu-ub(K.u)-ludJi KA-TAR-ZU KA
libbi-ka lusapi, " by thy word may I live ; may I honour thy command
ment, the word of thy heart." In W. A. I. iv. 29, 16 — 18, dalali, " exal
tation" (not " subject"), is the equivalent of the Accadian UB (for which
see ii. 35, 36, dri = tanittu, "exaltation").

2 This is the conclusion of the original Accadian colophon. TLo
next line is in Assyrian, and was added by the scribes of Assur-bani-
pal.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD.EA. 353

world, like the punishments inflicted by human judges
for disobedience to the laws. Unassisted by intercourse
with Semitic belief, Accadian religion never advanced
beyond the idea of vicarious punishment, which grew
out of the doctrine of primitive society that demands an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is a doctrine
that lies at the root of the institution of sacrifice, and it
marks the high tide of Accadian faith before the Semite
appeared upon the stage.

Along with these indications of Semitic influence,
however, the psalm bears equally clear evidence of its
Accadian origin. The consciousness of sin is still but
rudimentary ; the psalmist knows that one of the gods is
angry with him because he is suffering pain. He has
eaten what has been cursed by heaven, or else has un
wittingly trampled on the forbidden thing. In the
language of the Polynesians, he has touched what is
tabooed, and the curse of heaven accordingly falls upon
him. Even when he speaks of his transgressions, he falls
into the language of the old magical texts ' his sins are
seven times seven, that mystical number which was so
closely connected with the spirits of earth. The belief
in the mysterious power of names, moreover, is still
strong upon him. In fear lest the deity he has offended
should not be named at all, or else be named incorrectly,
he does not venture to enumerate the gods, but classes
them under the comprehensive title of the divinities with
whose names he is acquainted and those of whose names
he is ignorant. It is the same when he refers to the
human race. Here, again, the ancient superstition about
words shows itself plainly. If he alludes to mankind, it

2 A

354 LECTURE V.

is to " mankind as many as pronounce a name," as many,
that is, as have names which may be pronounced.

We must, then, regard the penitential psalms as origi
nating in the Accadian epoch, but at a time when the
Accadian population was already profoundly influenced
by Semitic ideas. This agrees well with the language
and contents of the psalms themselves. They all belong
to northern Babylonia, more especially to Erech and
Nipur. Eut there is no reference in them to Sippara
and its Sun-god, no trace of acquaintanceship with the
empire of Sargon. It would therefore seem that they
mount back to an earlier date than the rise of the city of
Accad, and may consequently be placed midway between
the older hymns and those which were composed in
honour of the Sun-god.

But just as the sacred hymns were constantly added
to, new hymns being introduced into the ancient collec
tions perhaps as late as the time of Assur-bani-pal, so,
too, the number of the penitential psalms was increased
from time to time. At first the additions were in Acca
dian; afterwards they were written in Semitic only,
the character of the psalm being at the same time con
siderably changed. "Vain repetitions" were avoided,
and the psalm was more and more assimilated in form to
a prayer; on the other hand, forms of expression were
borrowed from the semi-magical hymns of Eridu, and
a stronger element of superstition gradually entered into
the composition of it. Here, for example, is a fragment
which I have elsewhere termed a prayer after a bad
dream, but which Dr. Zimmern, perhaps more correctly,
would entitle a psalm. The tablet which contains it is

THE SACREB BOOKS OF CHALD^A. 355

broken, the beginning and end of the prayer or psalm
being consequently lost.1

" 0 my god who art violent (against me), receive (my supplication).
0 my goddess, thou who art fierce (towards me), accept (my prayer).
Accept my prayer, (may thy liver be quieted).
0 my lord, long-suffering (and) merciful, (may thy heart be ap
peased).

By day, directing unto death that which destroys me,2 0 my god,
interpret (the vision).

0 my goddess, look upon me and accept my prayer.

May my sin be forgiven, may my transgression be cleansed.

Let the yoke be unbound, the chain be loosed.

May the seven winds carry away my groaning.

May I strip off my evil so that the bird bear (it) up to heaven.

May the fish carry away my trouble, may the river bear (it) along.

May the reptile of the field receive (it) from me ; may the waters

of the river cleanse me as they flow.
Make me shine like a mask of gold.
May I be precious in thy sight as a goblet (?) of glass.
Burn up (?) my evil, knit together3 my life ; bind together thy altar

that I may set up thine image.

Let me pass from my evil, and let me be kept with thee.
Enlighten me and let me dream a favourable dream.
May the dream that I dream be favourable ; may the dream that

I dream be established.

Turn the dream that I dream into a blessing.
May Makhir the god of dreams rest upon my head.
Yea, let me enter into E-Sagil, the palace of the gods, the temple

of life.
To Merodach, the merciful, to blessedness, to prospering hands,

entrust me.

Let me exalt thy greatness, let me magnify thy divinity.
Let the men of my city honour thy mighty deeds."

The psalm or prayer, it will be seen, was composed
by a native of Babylon, and probably formed part of the

1 W. A. I. iv. 66, No. 2. 2 Pasdhi.

8 Kutstsur / we may read (with Zimmern) utsur, " protect."

2 A 2

356 LECTURE V.

ritual used in the service of the great temple of Mero-
dach. In any case it could hardly have been included
in the old collection of penitential psalms. These were
written in Accadian, and it is not probable that any were
admitted among them whose language showed plainly
their more recent date. Assur-bani-pal informs us1 that
after putting down the rebellion of his brother, the
viceroy of Babylonia, he " pacified the angry gods and
wrathful goddesses with a public prayer (taJcrilti) and a
penitential psalm, restoring and establishing in peace
their festivals, which had been discontinued, as they
were in former days." As the word for penitential psalm
is expressed by the compound ideograph which served
to denote it in Accadian, it is possible that on the occa
sion in question a psalm was selected from the ancient
collection ; but it is also possible that a new psalm was
composed specially for the event.

That such special compositions were not unusual among
the Assyrians of Assur-bani-pal' s days, is proved by a
hymn or prayer on behalf of the king which the compiler
of a list of the gods in the chief temples of Assyria has
added to his catalogue. It seems to have been intended
for use in one of them. Where the text first becomes
legible, the hymn reads as follows : 2

" Joy of heart, production of purity, production of enlightenment
(sukattimtu), the explanation of what is revealed and concealed (?),
reveal to the city of Assur ; long days and years unending, a strong
weapon, a reign hereafter, names abundant and long, first-born who
shall be rulers, adjudge to the king my lord who has given all this to his
gods. Habitations (?) many and far-extended adjudge to his people (?).
As a man may he live and be at peace. Over kings and princes may
he exercise wide empire. May he come to a hoar old age. For the

i W. A. I. v. 4, 88 sq. 2 W. A. I. iii. 6G, Rev. 6 sq.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD2EA. 357

men who pronounce these prayers may the land of the silver sky,1 oil
unceasing and the wine of blessedness, be their food, and a good noon
tide2 their light. Health to my body and prosperity is my prayer to
the gods who dwell in the land of Assyria."

This prayer introduces us to a subject without a dis
cussion of which no description of a religion can be com
plete. What were the views about a future life enter
tained by the Babylonians and Assyrians? "Was their
religion intended for this world only, to avoid evil here
and to live happily, or did they look forward to a world
beyond the grave, with joys and miseries of its own?
The reference to "the land of the silver sky" in the
prayer I have just cited would seem to show that Assy
rian religion was neither a faith which, like that of the
Buddhist, hoped for the annihilation of consciousness,
nor yet a faith which, like that of the Greeks of old,
saw in the future nothing but a dreary existence in a
sunless world, a passage from the world of light and
life to the darkness and the night.

But this conclusion would not be in accordance with
the testimony of the older texts. The incantations and
exorcisms, the semi-magical hymns of Eridu, limit the
horizon of their view to the present life. The spirits

1 We may compare with this expression a phrase in a small fragment

(R 528) which runs : "At dawn a hymn (KHIR) before Saraas four

hymns to Ea the pure god of the land of the (silver ?) sky .... (begin
ning with) the incantation : The pure seat."

2 Kiriru, allied to kararu, rendered AN-IZI, " divine fire," in W. A. I.
iv. 15. 18, 19, where we read, "in the noon-tides of day and night" (i.e.
the dead of night). In W. A. I. ii. 47, 61, AN-IZI is translated urrut
" full day," and in iii. 55. 49, 50, as Jensen points out, we have the
four periods of the day enumerated : " On the nineteenth day enter in
the morning the presence of Bahu, at noon (AN-IZI) the presence of tho
supreme god, in the afternoon the presence of Eimmon and in the
evening the presence of Istar,"

358 LECTURE V.

with whom they people the universe are to be dreaded
or praised by the living only. The pains man seeks to
remove, the blessings he asks for, all cease with death.
There is little or no trace of any thought of a world
beyond. In the hymns, it is true, Merodach, the bene
factor of the human race, is described as raising the dead
to life, but the life to which they are raised is the life of
the present world. Whatever might have been the sense
afterwards attached to the expression, in the early hymns
it means nothing more than a belief in the power of
spells to restore the dead to life. The recovery of the
sick was considered in no way more wonderful than a
recovery from a state of trance or from death itself ; if
the god of wisdom and magic could effect the one, he
could equally effect the other.

I do not deny that the primitive Chaldsean may have
believed in the continuation of existence after death.
The belief in a Mul-lil, a lord of the ghost- world, pre
supposes this. The lost friends who returned to him in
his dreams would have assured him that they had not
vanished utterly. But I can find no traces of ancestor-
worship in the early literature of Chaldaea which has
survived to us. Whatever views the Chaldsean may have
entertained about the ghost- world, they were vague and
shadowy ; it was a subterranean region, inhabited for the
most part by spirits who were not the spirits of the dead,
but of the objects of nature. They were typified by the
spirits of earth, and were all the subjects of Mul-lil.

The ghost-world of Mpur lay beneath the earth. It
was here that the golden throne of the Anunas, the
spirits of earth, was erected, hard by the waters of life
which they were appointed to guard, When the cult

THE SACKED BOOKS OF CHALD.EA. 359

of Jaipur and the cult of Eridu were united into one,
this underground region was necessarily connected with
the great ocean-stream which encircled the earth. Here
accordingly was placed the home of the Aniinas, and
it became the entrance to the realm of Hades. As
primitive Accadian geography, however, identified the
Euphrates and the Persian Gulf with the ocean- stream,
the approach to Hades passed into Datilla, the river of
death j1 and Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge, was trans
lated to dwell among the gods beyond the mouth of the
Euphrates.2 This was the land set apart for the im
mortal deities in the belief of the people of Eridu, for
their gods were gods of the sea whose waters washed
their shore. The unification of the creeds of Mpur and
Eridu thus brought with it an identification of the ghost-
world with the world of Ea, of the empire of Mul-lil
with the deep over which Ea ruled. The world of the
ghosts and the world of the gods were accordingly con
founded together, the distinction between them being
that whereas the ghosts were still left in their subter
ranean abodes, Mul-lil was elevated to the world above,
there to dwell with Ea and his son Merodach, the god of
light. But this upper world of the gods was immediately
above the world of the ghosts, and was in fact the passage
into it.

This theological geography is perfectly incompatible

1 W. A. I. ii. 62, 50. "The ship of the river Datilla is the ship of
the Lady of life and death."

2 The story here preserves a feature of the original myth. In the
time of the composition of the poem, the seat of the gods was regarded
as being in heaven, so that the author of the Gisdhubar epic, Sin-liqi-
annini, has admitted a contradiction into his narrative. .

360 LECTUBE V.

•with another theory of the abode of the gods, which
placed it on the summit of Kharsag-kurkura, " the moun
tain of the world." This mountain of the world is de
clared by Sargon to be the mountain of Arallu or Hades :
" The gods Ea, Sin, Samas, Eimmon, Adar and their
august wives, who were truly born in the midst of the
temple of Kharsag-kurkura, the mountain of Arallu, have
excellently founded glistering sanctuaries and well-
wrought shrines in the city of Dur-Sargon."1 Famous
temples were named after it, in Assyria at all events,
and its site was sought in the mountainous region of the
north-west. An old geographical table tells us that
Arallu was the land or mountain of gold,2 a statement
which reminds us of the words of Job (xxxvii. 22), " Out
of the north cometh gold," as well as of the Greek legend
of the griffins who guarded the hidden gold in the distant
north. We find an allusion to the Babylonian myth in
the 14th chapter of Isaiah (ver. 13). There the Baby
lonian monarch is described as having said in his heart :
" I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above
the stars of El ; I will sit also upon the mount of the
assembly (of the gods), in the extremities of the north ;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds ; I will be
like the Most High." Here, in this Chaldsean Olympos,
the gods were imagined to have been born and to have
their seats ; its summit was hidden by the clouds, and
the starry firmament seemed to rest upon it. It is pos
sible that it was identified, at any rate in later times,
with the mountain on which the ark of the Chaldeean

* KLhors. 155 sq. See Delitzsch, Wo lay das Paradies, pp. 117 — 122.
2 W.A.I, ii. 51. 11.

THE SACKED BOOKS OF CHALD^A. 361

Noah rested, " the mountain of Nizir," the modern Eo-
wandiz. Kowandiz towers high above its fellows in the
Kurdish ranges, and the Babylonian might well believe
that its peak had never been ascended by mortal man.
If Xisuthros had touched the sacred soil with his ship,
he was qualified by the very fact to take his place amid
" the assembly of the gods."

"The mountain of the world" was peculiarly sacred
among the Assyrians. Perhaps their nearer proximity
to the great mountainous chains of the north-west, and
their distance from the sea, had made them more ready
to adopt the belief which placed the home of the gods
in the mountains of the north than beside the waters of
the Persian Gulf. It is difficult to tell in what part of
Babylonia the belief first arose. If Kharsag-kalama, " the
mountain of mankind," the name given to the tower of
the chief temple of Kis, is the same as " the mountain of
the world," we might discover its cradle in the neigh
bourhood of Babylon. It will be remembered that in
the hymn to the Fire-god the seven spirits of earth are
declared to have been born in " the mountain of the sun
set," and to have grown up "in the mountain of the sun
rise." Here the sun is distinctly regarded as rising and
setting behind a mountain; and since there were no moun
tains on the western side of the Babylonian plain, we must
consider the poet to have looked upon the mountain
behind which the sun rose and set as one and the same.1
During the hours of darkness the Sun-god must have

1 I have assumed that the poet's horizon was bounded by the plain
of Babylonia. He may, however, have lived after the Babylonians had
become acquainted with Palestine, and "the mountain of the sunset"
may therefore be the mountainous land of Dhidhi or Phoenicia.

362 LECTURE V.

been supposed to have journeyed underneath the earth,
traversing, it may be, the realms of Hades on his way.
Whether this mountain, which thus fringed, as it were,
the sides of the earth, can be connected with " the moun
tain of the world," I cannot say. In any case, by the
side of a belief in a subterranean Hades and a paradise of
the gods beyond the mouth of the Euphrates, there was
also a belief in a Hades and a paradise which were esta
blished on the loftiest of the mountains of the north.

A bilingual Babylonian hymn, which appears to have
been connected with Mpur relates to the latter belief.
It is thus that it begins : 1

" 0 mighty mountain of Mul-lil, Im-kharsag (the mountain sky),
whose head rivals the heavens ; the pure deep has been laid
as its foundation.

Among the mountains it lies like a strong wild bull.

Its horns glisten like the splendour of the Sun-god.

Like the star of heaven that proclaims (the day) it is full of glit
tering rays.

The mighty mother Nin-lilli (the lady of the ghost-world), the
reverence2 of E-Sara (the temple of the hosts of heaven), the
glory2 of E-Kura (the temple of the hosts of earth), the adorn
ment of E-Giguna (the temple of the city of darkness), the
heart of E-Ki-gusura (the temple of the land of light)."

In this hymn the world-tree of Eridu, whose roots were
planted in the deep, has made way for a world-mountain,
with its head reaching unto heaven like the tower of
Babel, and its feet planted upon the deep. As the con
ception of the world-tree belonged to Sumir or southern

1 W. A. I. iv. 27, No. 2.

2 The female and male organs of generation are referred to. As the
word for "shame" or "reverence" in the Accadian text is the Semitic
uru, the text must either belong to the Semitic period or have been
revised by Semitic copyists.

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 363

Babylonia, so the conception of the world-mountain
belongs to Accad or northern Babylonia ; it is expressly
termed the mountain of Mul-lil, and is identified with
Mn-lil, the "reverence of E-Sara," whose son was the
Sun-god Adar. It is at least noticeable that one of the
hymns to the Sun-god which originated at Sippara begins
by declaring that he urose from the mighty mountain,"
"from the mountain of the stream," "the place of the
destinies."1

The introduction of an Olympos into Babylonian mytho
logy must necessarily have modified the conception of
the Chaldeean Hades, more especially when we find that
Mul-lil, the lord of the ghost-world, was himself asso
ciated with it. The world of the gods was separated
from the abode of the dead j the latter remained below,
while the gods who had once presided there ascended to
the upper world. Their places were taken by the god
Irkalla and the goddess Allat, originally mere forms of
Mul-lil and Mn-lil, but now distinguished from the Bel
and Beltis into whom Mul-lil and Mn-lil had been trans
formed. The addition of the sky-god of Erech to the
common pantheon of Babylonia still further tended to
divide the two worlds. The Olympos became a ladder

1 W.A.I v. 51, 1—6. Can "the mountain of the stream" have
any reference to Gen. ii. 10 ? This mountain of the sun is described in
the second column of the ninth tablet of the Epic of Gisdhubar (Haupt,
Babylonische Nimrodepos) : " When he arrived at the twin (mdsi)
mountains, where day by day they guard the rising (and setting of the
sun), their crown (touched) the massy vault of heaven, below their foot
ing reached to (kasdat) Hades; scorpion-men guard its gate, whose ter-
ribleness is dread and their appearance death; the greatness of their
splendour overthrows the forests. At the rising of the sun and tho
setting of the sun they guard the Sun-god, and when QHsdhubar saw
them, fear and dread took possession of his face."

364 LECTURE V.

to the heavens in which the visible deities of light —
Samas, Sin and Istar — ruled over the visible firmament,
while the other gods dwelt in a yet more remote region
of the universe, " the heaven of Anu."

This is the point at which the religious development
of Babylonian belief had arrived when the majority of
the legendary poems — or at least the older portions of
them — were composed. Hades is still the gloomy realm
beneath the earth, where the spirits of the dead flit about
in darkness, with dust and mud for their food and drink,
and from whence they escape at times to feed on the
blood of the living. Here the shades of the great heroes
of old sit each on his throne, crowned and terrible, rising
up only to greet the coming among them of one like unto
themselves. The passage to these subterranean abodes
is through the seven gates of the world, each guarded
by its porter, who admits the dead, stripping him of his
apparel, but never allowing him to pass through them
again to the upper world. Good and bad, heroes and
plebeians, are alike condemned to this dreary lot ; a state
of future rewards and punishments is as yet undreamed
of y moral responsibility ends with death. Hades is a land
of forgetfulness and of darkness, where the good and evil
deeds of this life are remembered no more ; and its occu
pants are mere shadows of the men who once existed, and
whose consciousness is like the consciousness of the
spectral figures in a fleeting dream. The Hades of the
Babylonian legends closely resembles the Hades of the
Homeric poems.

But side by side with this pitiful picture of the world
beyond the grave, there were the beginnings of higher
and nobler ideas. In the Epic of Gisdhubar, the ghost of

THE SACRED BOOKS OF CHALD^EA. 365

Ea-bani is described as rising like a dust-cloud from the
earth and mounting up to heaven, where he lives among
the gods, gazing on the deeds that are done below.

" On a couch he reclines and pure water he drinks. He who is slain
in battle, thou seest and I see. His father and his mother (support)
his head ; his wife addresses the corpse. His body in the field (is
placed) ; thou seest and I see. His ghost in the earth is uncovered ;
of his ghost he has no overnight ; thou seest and I see. The food at
the edge of the tomb is bewitched (?) ; the food which is thrown into
the street he eats."

Ea-bani, however, was half a god. Gisdhubar, too,
who seems to be associated with him in his future lot,
was half divine. If while E-bani and Gisdhubar were

thus permitted to

" live and lie reclined
On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind,"

the other heroes of ancient renown, Ner and Etana, were
relegated to the shades below, it was because Ner had
once been Nergal, the prince of the infernal world, and
Etana seems to be the Titan of Berossos who made war
against Kronos or Ea. But when the semi-human heroes
of epic song had thus been permitted to enter heaven, it
could not be long before a similar permission was extended
to heroes who were wholly human. Little by little, as
the conception of the gods and their dwelling-place became
spiritualized, "the mountain of the world" passing first
into the sky and then into the invisible " heaven of Ami,"
the conception of the future condition of mankind became
spiritualised also. The doctrine of the immortality of the
conscious soul began to dawn upon the Babylonian mind,
and along with it necessarily went the doctrine of rewards
and punishments for the actions committed in the flesh.
The Babylonian was already familiar with the idea of
sacrifice for sin and of vicarious punishment; all that

366 LECTURE V.

remained was to enlarge the horizon of his faith, and to
extend his belief in the divine awards for piety and sin
to the life beyond the grave. The prayer I quoted just
now from the compiler of the list of the gods in the
Assyrian temples, proves that some at least of the Assyro-
Babylonian people asked their deities for something more
than merely temporal blessings. They might pray that
their monarch should live "a hundred years,771 but they
prayed also that they themselves might live "for ever"
hereafter in " the land of the silver sky." The world-
mountain had followed the fate of the world- tree, and
been consigned to the mythologists and the mytholo-
gising poets; even the invisible " heaven of Ann" itself
had vanished into the deep blue of the visible firmament;
above and beyond them all was the true home of the gods
and the spirits of the blest, a home towards which the
smoke of the altar might ascend, but into whose mysteries
none could penetrate till death and the grace of Baal had
freed him from the shackles of the flesh.

1 "While 60 was the numerical unit of Accadian literature, the Semitic
Assyrians made 100 their standard number. The stereotyped form
of addressing the monarch accordingly was, "A hundred years to the
king my lord; may he live to old age; may offspring be multiplied to
the king my lord 1" (K 501, 12—16 ; K 538, 13—16).

LECTURE VI.
COSMOGONIES AND ASTEO-THEOLOGY.

MORE than once I have had to allude to the speculations
the Babylonians indulged in regarding the origin of the
world. In an early age these speculations naturally
assumed a theological form. As the elements themselves
were regarded as divine, or at any rate as possessed of a
divine spirit, their source and shaping must have been
divine also. They were deities who had formed them
selves into their present order and appearance, or else
they had been so formed by other and superior powers.

In course of time this theological conception became
mythological. The elements themselves ceased to be
divine, but they represented and symbolised divine beings
whose actions produced the existing order of nature.
The mythological conception in turn gave way to another,
which saw in the elements inert matter created, begotten
or moulded by the gods. Lastly, schools of philosophy
arose which sought to find in matter the original cause
of all things, including even the gods, though they veiled
the materialism of their views under a mythological sym
bolism.

Broadly speaking, the cosmological theories of Chaldaaa
divide themselves into two main classes, the genealogical
and the creative. According to Accadian ideas, the world

368 LECTURE VI.

was created by the gods ; the Semite saw in it rather a
birth or emanation. A time came, it is true, when the
two sets of ideas were harmonised; and by the assumption
of a chaos which had existed from " the beginning," and
the further assumption that "the great gods" had created
the objects we see about us, room was left for the creative
hypothesis, while the belief in the birth of the elements
one out of the other was at the same time stoutly main
tained. The form taken by the combination of the two
ideas will be best seen in the latest product of Assyro-
Babylonian cosmogonical systems, that which describes
the creation of the world in a series of days.

First of all, however, let us read the account given by
Berossos of the creation of the world, and professed by
him to be derived from the writings of Cannes, that semi-
piscine being who rose out of the waters of the Persian
Gulf to instruct the people of Chalda3a in the arts and
sciences of life. It is pretty certain that Berossos had
access to documents which purported to come from the
hand of Cannes or Ea, and consequently to deal with
events which preceded the appearance of man on the
earth. The Chaldsean system of astronomy which Beros
sos translated into Greek was likewise asserted by him
to have been composed by a god, namely Bel ; and the
fragments of the original work which we now possess
show that his assertion was correct, inasmuch as the work
bears the title of the Observations of Bel. The inscrip
tions, moreover, expressly inform us that Ea was not
only the god of wisdom, but himself an author. We
learn from a tablet, "with warnings to kings against
injustice," that if the king "decrees according to the
writing of Ea, the great gods will establish him in good

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 369

report and the knowledge of justice."1 There is, there
fore, no reason to doubt the statement of B crosses that
the account of the creation which he gives was extracted
from a document that professed to have been inscribed
by the god of Eridu himself.

" The following is the purport of what he said : There was a time
in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters,
wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced by a two
fold principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with
two wings, others with four, and with two faces. They had one body,
but two heads ; the one that of a man, the other of a woman ; they
were likewise in their several organs both male and female. Other
human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of a goat ; some
had horses' feet, while others united the hind-quarters of a horse with
the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippocentaurs. Bulls like
wise were bred there with the heads of men ; and dogs with four-fold
bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes ; horses
also with the heads of dogs ; men, too, and other animals, with tho
heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were
creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animal.
In addition to these, there were fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other
monstrous animals, which assumed each other's shape and countenance.
Of all which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belos at
Babylon.

The person who was supposed to have presided over them was a
woman named Omoroka, which in the Chaldaean language is Thalatth
(read Thavatth), which in Greek is interpreted Thalassa (the sea) ; but
according to the most true interpretation it is equivalent to the Moon.
All things being in this situation, Belos came and cut the woman
asunder, and of one half of her he formed the earth, and of the other
half the heavens, and at the same time destroyed the animals within
her (in the abyss).

All this was an allegorical description of nature. For, the whole

1 W.A.I, iv. 55. 7, 8. Sipar is literally "a message," but as tho
message was in later times a written one, it signifies "a letter" or
"writing." I have translated sitilti (for sitisti), "good report," on the
strength of W. A. I. v. 17, 4 — 7, and the meaning of its ideographic
equivalent, " fatherliness ;" but it may signify " study."

2 B

370 LECTURE VI.

universe consisting of moisture, and animals being continually generated
therein, the deity above-mentioned (Belos) cut off his own head ; upon
•which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth,
and from thence men were formed. On this account it is that they
are rational, and partake of divine knowledge. This Belos, by whom
they signify Zeus, divided the darkness, and separated the heavens from
the earth, and reduced the universe to order. But the recently-created
animals, not being able to bear the light, died. Belos upon this, seeing
a vast space unoccupied, though by nature fruitful, commanded one of
the gods to take off his head, and to mix the blood with the earth, and
from thence to form other men and animals, which should be capable
of bearing the light. Belos formed also the stars and the sun and the
moon and the five planets."1

The account of the cosmological theories of the Baby
lonians thus given by Berossos has not come to us imme
diately from his hand. It was first copied from his book
by Alexander Polyhistor, a native of Asia Minor, who
was a slave at Eome for a short period in the time of
Sulla ; and from Polyhistor it has been embodied in the
works of the Christian writers Eusebios and George the
Synkellos. It is not quite certain, therefore, whether
the whole of the quotation was originally written by
Berossos himself. At all events, it evidently includes
two inconsistent accounts of the creation of the world,
which have been awkwardly fitted on to one another. In
one of them, the composite creatures who filled the watery
chaos, over which Thavatth, the Tiamat or Tiavat of the
inscriptions, presided, were represented as being destroyed
by Bel when he cut Thavatth asunder, forming the heavens
out of one portion of her body, and the earth out of the
other. In the second version, the monsters of chaos
perished through the creation of light, and their places
were taken by the animals and men produced by the

1 Euseb. Cliron. i. 4.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 371

mixture of the earth with the blood of Eel. What this
blood meant may be gathered from the Phoenician myth
which told how the blood of the sky, mutilated by his
son Kronos or Baal, fell upon the earth in drops of rain
and filled the springs and rivers. It was, in fact, the
fertilising rain.

Both versions of the genesis of the universe reported
by Berossos agree not only in the representation of a
chaos that existed before the present order of things, but
also in the curious statement that this chaos was peopled
with strange creatures, imperfect first attempts of nature,
as it were, to form the animal creation of the present
world. In these chaotic beginnings of animal life we
may see a sort of anticipation of the Darwinian hypo
thesis. At any rate, the Babylonian theory on the sub
ject must have been the source of the similar theory
propounded by the Ionic philosopher Anaximander in the
sixth century before our era. The philosophical systems
of the early Greek thinkers of Asia Minor came to them
from Babylonia through the hands of the Phoenicians,
and it is consequently no more astonishing to find Anaxi
mander declaring that men had developed out of the fish
of the sea, than to find his predecessor Thales agreeing
with the priests of Babylonia in holding that all things
have originated from a watery abyss.

The fact that Anaximander already knew of the Baby
lonian doctrine shows that it could not have been sug
gested to Berossos himself, as we might be tempted to
think, by the colossal bulls that guarded the gates, and
the curious monsters depicted on the walls, of the temple
of Bel. And we are now able to carry the belief back
to a period very much earlier than that of Anaximander.

2 B 2

372 LECTURE VI.

The library of Mneveh contained the copy of a tablet
which, according to its concluding lines, was originally
written for the great temple of Nergal at Cutha.1 The
words of the text are put in the mouth of Nergal the
destroyer, who is represented as sending out the hosts of
the ancient brood of chaos to their destruction. Nergal
is identified with Nerra, the plague-god, who smites them
with pestilence, or rather with Ner, the terrible "king
who gives not peace to his country, the shepherd who
grants no favour to his people."2 We are first told how
the armies of chaos came into existence. " On a tablet
none wrote, none disclosed, and no bodies or brushwood
were produced in the land ; and there was none whom I
approached. "Warriors with the body of a bird of the
valley, men with the faces of ravens, did the great gods
create. In the ground did the gods create their city.
Tiamat (the dragon of chaos) suckled them. Their pro-

1 Col. iv. 11. 9 sq. Atta sarru patesi rium lu nin sanama sa flu
inambu (u) sarruta tebus dup suatu ebus-ka nard asdhur-ka ina ali
GU-DU-A-KI ina bit SU-LIM (i)na parak[LVL] D. p. U-GUR ezibakka :
" Thou, king, priest-ruler, shepherd, or whatever thou art, whom God
shall proclaim to govern the kingdom, for thee have I made this tablet,
for thee have I written the record-stone ; in the city of Cutha, in the
temple of 'Sulim, in the sanctuary of Nergal, have I left it for thee."

2 Ana pale mind ezib anaku sarru la musallimu mati-su u rieum la
musallimu ummanu-su ki ustakkan pagri u Mti use t si salum mail nisi
musi mutu namtar arur-su : " What have I left for (my) reign 1 I am
a king who gives not peace to his land, and a shepherd who gives not
peace to his people ; since I have made corpses and produced jungle,
the whole of the land and the men I have cursed with night, death and
pestilence." Buti means " thickets" or "jungle," and corresponds with
the Accadian sag ; see GIS-BA sag and GIS-BA-PAL = bdtum, W.A.I, ii.
41. 70, 71 (for NAM-BA — kidtu, cf. v. 11, 3, also qistu, "offering");
. . . . sag = Mtnm (" thickness"), v. 20, 48; sag = Utum, v. 29, 56.
In 82. 5—22. 19G. Rev. 8, buti is opposed to dt'biri, "pasture-lands."

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 373

geny (sasur) the mistress of the gods created. In the
midst of the mountains they grew up and became heroes
and increased in number. Seven kings, brethren, ap
peared and begat children. Six thousand in number
were their peoples. The god Banini their father was
king ; their mother was the queen Melili." It was the
subjects and the offspring of these semi-human heroes
whom the god Ner was deputed to destroy.

It is clear that the legend of Cutha agrees with Beros-
sos in the main facts, however much it may differ in
details. In both alike, we have a first creation of living
beings, and these beings are of a composite nature, and
the nurselings of Tiamat or Chaos. In both alike, the
whole brood is exterminated by the gods of light. A
curious point in connection with the legend is the descrip
tion of chaos as a time when writing was as yet unknown
and records unkept. Perhaps we may see in this an
allusion to the fact that the Babylonian histories of the
pre-human period were supposed to have been composed
by the gods.

The date to which the legend in its present form may
be assigned is difficult to determine. The inscription
is in Semitic only, like the other creation-tablets, and
therefore cannot belong to the pre-Semitic age. It be
longs, moreover, to an epoch when the unification of the
deities of Babylonia had already taken place, and the
circle of "the great gods" was complete. Ea, Istar,
Zamama, Anunit, even Nebo and " Samas the warrior,"
are all referred to in it. We must therefore place its
composition after the rise not only of the hymns of
Sippara, but also of the celebrity of the Semitic god of
Borsippa. On the other hand, the reference to the patesi

374 LECTURE VI.

or priest-king in the concluding lines seems to prevent
us from assigning too late a date to the poem. Perhaps
we shall not be far wrong in ascribing it to the era of
Khammuragas.

Tiamat or Tiavat, the Thavatth of Berossos, is the
tfhom or " deep " of the Old Testament, and the word is
used in Assyrian, in the contracted form tamtu, to denote
" the deep sea." It was upon the face of the Phom or
"deep" that " the breath of Elohim " brooded, according
to the first chapter of Genesis. The word is not only
Semitic, but, in its cosmological signification, of Semitic
origin. It has, however, an Accadian descent. The
belief that the watery abyss was the source of all things
went back to the worshippers of the sea-god Ea at Eridu.
But with them the deep was termed apzu, which a pun
ning etymology afterwards read ab-zu, " the house of
knowledge," wherein Ea, the god of wisdom, was imagined
to dwell. The Sumerian abzu was borrowed by the Se
mites under the form of apsu. The Sumerians had
endowed it with a spirit, in accordance with the Sha-
nanistic faith of early days, and as such had made it the
mother of Ea and of the other gods. But I have already
pointed out in a previous Lecture that the abzu^ or deep,
of which Ea was lord, was not only the ocean-stream
that surrounded the earth, and upon which the earth
floated, like Delos in Greek myth ; it was also the deep
which rolled above the firmament of heaven, through
whose windows its waters descended in the days of the
deluge. Consequently the mother of Ea was usually
known by another name than that of Apzu. She was
Zikum or Zigarum, " the heaven" (W.A.I, ii. 48, 26;
50, 27), whom a mythological list describes as "the

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 375

mother that has begotten heaven and earth" (W. A. I.
ii. 54, 18). In the same passage she is declared to be
" the handmaid of the spirit of E-kura," the lower firma
ment or earth ; and with this agrees the statement that
Zikura, a dialectic form of Zigarum,1 is the earth itself
(W. A. I. ii. 48, 27). But it was not the existing earth
or the existing heaven that was represented by Zikum ;
she was rather the primordial abyss out of which both
earth and heaven were produced. Possibly an old myth
may have related that she was torn asunder when the
present world was made, the upper half of her becoming
the sky and the lower half the earth. This at least is
what we may gather from the story given by Berossos.

As far back as the days of the priest-kings of Tel-loh,
Zikum was honoured in southern Babylonia under the
name of Bahu.2 She was " the daughter of heaven," to
whom they had erected a temple at Zerghul. Like Gula,
she was "the great mother," and in the era of totemism
was known as " the pure heifer." Bau, or Bahu, is the
boku of the Old Testament, the Baau of Phoenician mytho
logy, of whom Philon Byblios informs us that " of the
wind Kolpia and of his wife Baau, which is interpreted
t night,' were begotten two mortal men, Aion and Pro-

1 Zi-kum, Zi-garum, Zi-kura, are all compounds of Zit "a spirit," and
are explained by Zi-(E-)kura, " the spirit of the lower firmament." It
is possible that Zi-kum was originally "the spirit of the earth" alone,
Ea being the spirit of the deep. Zi-kura and Zi-garum may have
different etymologies, since garum seems to be connected with gurt a
Sumerian synomym of apzu. In W.A.I, iv. 15, 5, e-gur-ra is ren
dered by the Assyrian apsu. There seems to have been a confusion
between E-kura and E-gura.

2 See Hommel, Vorsemitisclie Kulturen, p. 380. I do not feel quite
certain, however, about the identification.

376 LECTURE VI.

togonos."1 According to the book of Genesis, the earth
created by God in the beginning was " without form
and void," the word translated "void" being bo hu or
" chaos." The wind or spirit which the Phoenicians
associated with Baau is the Sumerian spirit of the deep,
the Zi ZiJcum invoked in the magical texts.2

An allusion to the creation of the heavens out of the
watery abyss, and the subsequent formation of the earth,
is found in a mythological document, where we read :
" The heaven was made from the waters ; the god and
the goddess create the earth."3 The god and the goddess
must of course mean the heaven and the deep, and thus
presuppose a cosmological theory inconsistent with that
of the rulers of Tel-loh, who entitle Bahu the daughter
of the sky. "We may gather from this that Bahu and
Zikum were not originally the same divinities, and that
it was only through a belief that the ocean-stream was
fed from heaven that Bahu became identified with it.
The Semites, therefore, could not have come into contact
with the cosmogony of the Sumerians until after the age
of the patesis of Zerghul.

But whatever form the old cosmogony may have
assumed, the fundamental element in it remained un
changed. The watery abyss was always the primal
source of the universe. Whether it was the heaven
which first rose out of the deep, and then in combination
with the deep produced the earth, or whether the deep

1 Euseb. Prcap. Evang. i. 10.

2 Soin W.A.I. iv. 1. ii. 36.

3 K 170, Obv. 6, 7. The word "goddess" is phonetically written in
Aceadian DiN-^'-n, which settles the reading of the form DINGI-?? on the
early bricks.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO -THEOLOGY. 377

itself developed into the heavens and the earth, the deep,
and the deep alone, was the first of things to exist. If
Bahu, therefore, was ever identified with the deep in the
mind of the southern Babylonian, it must have been
when the deep had ceased to be the watery abyss of
chaos and had become the home of the creator Ea, deriving
its waters from the heavens above.

But it is more probable that the identification was due
to a total misconception of the true character of Bahu.
In the Phoenician mythology as in Genesis, Bohu is sim
ply " chaos," but it is the chaos which existed on earth,
not within the waters of the abyss. It represents that
pre-human age which, according to the legend of Cutha,
witnessed the creation of the monsters of Tiamat. These
monsters had their home, their " city," in " the ground ; "
there was therefore already an earth by the side of the
deep. But this earth was the abode of chaos, of Bahu,
and had originated, like the sky, out of the waters of the
abyss. There were thus two representatives of chaos,
the primaeval Apzu, the Tiamat of the Semitic epoch,
and the secondary Bahu who presided over the chaos of
the earth. Later ages failed to distinguish between the
two, and Apzu and Bahu thus became one and the same.

But a new distinction now took the place of the older
one. Bahu was no longer distinguished from Apzu;
she was distinguished, on the other hand, from Tiamat.
Bahu became one of the great gods, while Tiamat was
left to personate chaos and all the anarchy and evil that
proceeded out of chaos. The spirits of earth were trans
formed into the seven evil demons who had their dwelling
in the deep, and the cosmological sundering of the body

378 LECTURE YI.

of Zikum took a mythological shape. It appears in the
legendary poems as the struggle between Merodach and
the dragon Tiamat, which ended in the rout of Tiamat
and her allies, and the tearing asunder of the body of the
fiend. The poems are all of the Semitic age ; and though
the materials upon which they are based doubtless go
back to a pre-Semitic era, we have no means at present
of determining how much in them belongs to primitive
Chaldsea, and how much is the invention of Semitic
imagination. That Merodach appears in them as the
champion of the gods, proves only that the legends they
embody originated in either Eridu or Babylon.

Nothing can show more plainly the wide gulf that lies
between the religions of pre-Semitic and Semitic Chaldaea,
than the contrast between the Zikum of Eridu, the mother
of gods and men, and the wicked Tiamat of the legends,
with her misshapen body and malignant mind. In the
watery abyss in which the first philosophers of Eridu
saw the origin of all things, there was nothing unholy,
nothing abhorrent. On the contrary, it was the home
and mother of the great god Ea, the primal source of his
wisdom and his benevolence towards man. It was from
its waters that Cannes had ascended, bringing the light
of knowledge and art to the human race. But the
watery abyss personified by the Tiamat of the poems
belongs altogether to another category. It represents all
that is opposed to the present orderly course of the uni
verse ; it stands outside and in opposition to the gods of
heaven, and is thus essentially evil. Not only has the
problem of the origin of evil presented itself to the Baby
lonian; he has found a solution of it in his dragon of

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 379

chaos. It is thus that the great fight between Bel and
the dragon is described : l

" He (Anu ]) established for him (Merodach 1) also the shrine of

the mighty,

before his fathers for (his) kingdom he founded (it).2
Yea, thou art glorious among the great gods,
thy destiny has no rival, thy gift-day is Anu ;
from that day unchanged is thy command ;
high and low entreat thy hand ;
may the word that goes forth from thy mouth be established, the

unending decision of thy gift-day.
None among the gods surpasses thy power,3
as an adornment has (thy hand) founded the shrine of the gods ;
may the place of their gathering (?)* become thy home.
' 0 Merodach, thou art he that avenges us ;

we give thee the sovereignty, (we) the multitudes of the universe ;
thou possessest (it), and in the assembly (of the gods) may thy

word be exalted !

Never may they break thy weapons, may thine enemies tremble !
O lord, be gracious to the soul of him who putteth his trust in thee,
and destroy (literally, pour out) the soul of the god who has hold

of evil.'

1 Fragments of an Assyrian copy of the text from the library of
Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh were discovered by Mr. George Smith, and
published by him in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archae
ology, iv. 2, a revised edition of them being subsequently published
by Prof. Fr. Delitzsch in his Assyrische Lesestiicke. They have since
been supplemented by a tablet brought by Mr. Hormuzd Eassam from
Babylonia, which gives the beginning and end of the text, and shows
that it belonged to the fourth tablet of the Creation series. This
important tablet has been copied by Mr. Budge, who has been kind
enough to allow me the use of his copy. He gave an account of it in
the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology, Nov. 6th, 1883,
reserving a complete paper on the subject for the Transactions of the
same Society.

2 These are the last two lines of the third tablet of the Creation
series.

3 Literally, " passes by thy hand."

4 'Sagi, which occurs also in K 2584, 10 (lilil iagi-sunu).

380 LECTURE VI.

Then they placed in their midst by itself his plan ;l

they spoke to Merodach their first-born :

* May thy destiny, 0 lord, go before the gods, and

may they confirm the destruction and the creation of all that is said.

Set thy mouth, may it destroy his plan ;

turn, speak unto him and let him produce again his plan.'2

He spake and with his mouth destroyed his plan ;

he turned, he spake to him and his plan was re-created.

Like the word that issues from his mouth, the gods his fathers

beheld (it) ;

they rejoiced, they approached Merodach the king ;
they bestowed upon him the sceptre (and) throne and reign,
they gave him a weapon unrivalled, consuming the hostile :
' Go' (they said) < and cut off the life of Tiamat ;
let the winds carry her blood to secret places.'
They showed his path and they bade him listen and take the road.
There was too the bow, his weapon (which) he used ;
he made the club swing, he fixed its seat ;
then he lifted up his weapon, (which) he caused his right hand to

hold;

the bow and the quiver he hung at his side ;s
he set the lightning before him ;
with a glance of swiftness he filled his body.
He made also a snare to enclose the dragon of the sea.

1 Or "word." It is impossible in a translation to preserve the play
upon words in the original. The god of evil (Kingu, the husband of
Tiamat) is represented as having uttered a word which becomes a plan
or plot : it is this which Merodach is called upon to destroy and re-create.

2 Literally, "lift up his word."

8 The arming of Merodach with the bow of Anu in " the assembly
of the gods," was the subject of a special poem, of which a fragment
is preserved. One of the constellations was named " the Star of the
Bow ;" and according to the story of the Deluge (Col. iii. 51, 52), when
Xisuthros had left the ark and offered his sacrifice on the peak of Mount
Nizir, " Istar (the great goddess) at (her) coming lifted up the mighty
shafts (namzabi) which Anu had made." That the bow is here referred
to seems evident from a passage in a hymn (W. A. I. ii. 19. 7, 8), where
allusion is made to "the bow of the deluge," in Accadian gisme (GIS-BAM)
mdtu. The word "bow" is here translated, not by the ordinary Assy
rian midpanu, but by qastu, the Heb. qesheth. Comp. Gen. ix. 13 — 16.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO -THEOLOGY. 381

He seized the four winds that they might not issue forth from her,
the south wind, the north wind, the east wind (and) the west wind.
His hand brought the snare near unto the bow of his father Anu.
He created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the storm, the tempest,
the four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, the unending wind;
he caused the winds he had created to issue forth, seven in all,
confounding the dragon Tiamat, as they swept after him.
Then Bel lifted up the hurricane (deluge), his mighty weapon.
He rode in a chariot of destiny that fears not a rival.1
He stood firm and hung the four reins at its side.

unsparing, inundating her covering.

their teeth carry poison.

they sweep away the learned (?).

might and battle.
On the left they open ....

fear

With lustre and (terror) he covered his head.
He directed also (his way), he made his path descend ;
Humbly he set the .... before him.
By (his) command he kept back the ....
His finger holds the ....
On that day they exalted him, the gods exalted him,
the gods his fathers exalted him, the gods exalted him.
Then Bel approached ; he catches Tiamat by her waist ;
she seeks the huge bulk (?) of Kingu her husband,
she looks also for his counsel.

Then the rebellious one appointed him the destroyer of the com
mands (of Bel).

And the gods his helpers who marched beside him
beheld (how Merodach) the first-born holds their yoke.
He laid judgment on Tiamat, but she turned not her neck.
With her hostile lips she declared opposition :
. . . . 0 lord, the gods swept after thee.
They gathered their (forces) together to where thou wast.
Bel (launched) the deluge, his mighty weapon ;
(against) Tiamat who had raised herself (?) thus he sent it.

1 If Delitzsch's copy is correct, it is possible to extract sense out of
the line only by supposing that the negative is misplaced, and that we
should read makliri la galidta. In W. A. I. iii. 12, 32, galitti is used
of the "ebbing" sea.

382 LECTURE VI.

(Against) the gods my fathers thy enmity hast thou directed.
Thou harnesser of thy companions, may thy weapons pierce their

bodies.

Stand up, and I and thou will fight together/
When Tiamat heard this,

she uttered her former spells, she repeated her command.
Tiamat also cried out violently with a high voice.
From its roots she strengthened (her) seat completely.
She recites an incantation, she casts a spell,
and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms.
Then Tiamat attacked Merodach the prince of the gods ;
in combat they joined ; they engaged in battle.
Then Bel opened his snare and enclosed her ;
the evil wind that seizes from behind he sent before him.
Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow it ;

he made the evil wind to enter so that she could not close her lips.
The violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and
her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted.
He swung the club ; he shattered her stomach ;
he cut out her entrails ; he mastered her heart ;
he bound her and ended her life.
He threw down her corpse ; he stood upon it.
When Tiamat who marched before (them) was conquered,
he dispersed her forces, her host was overthrown,
and the gods her allies who marched beside her
trembled (and) feared (and) turned their back.
They escaped and saved their lives.
They clung to one another fleeing strengthlessly.
He followed them and broke their arms.
He cast his snare and they are caught in his net.
They recognise the spot(?), they are filled with grief;
they bear their sin, they are kept in bondage,
and the elevenfold offspring are troubled through fear.
The brilliancy (of Bel) the spirits as they march clearly perceived.
His hand lays darkness (upon their host).
At the same time their opposition (fails) from under them,
and the god Kingu who had (marshalled) their (forces)
he bound him also with the god of the tablets (of destiny in) his

right hand ;
and he took from him the tablets of destiny (that were) with him;

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. o83

with the string of the stylus1 he sealed (them) and held the (cover ?)

of the tablet.

From the time he had bound and laid the yoke on his foes
he led the illustrious enemy captive like an ox ;
the victory of the Firmament (an-sar) he laid fully upon (his)

antagonists ;
Merodach the warrior has overcome the lamentation of Ea the

lord of the world.

Over the gods in bondage he strengthened his watch, and
Tiamat whom he had bound he first turned backward ;
so Bel trampled on the foundations of Tiamat.
With his club unswung (la masdi) he smote (her) skull,
he broke (it) and caused her blood to flow ;
the north wind bore (it) away to secret places.
Then his father beheld, he rejoiced at the savour,
he bade the spirits (?) bring peace to himself;
And Bel rested, his body he fed.

He strengthened his mind (?), he formed a clever plan,
and he stripped her like a fish of (her) skin according to his plan ;
he described her likeness and (with it) overshadowed the heavens ;
he stretched out the skin, he kept a watch,
he urged on her waters that were not issuing forth ;
he lit up the sky, the sanctuary rejoiced,
and he presented himself before the deep the seat of Ea.
Then Bel measured the offspring of the deep,
the mighty master established the Upper Firmament (E-Sarra) as

his image.

The mighty master caused Anu, Bel (Mul-lil) and Ea
to inhabit the Upper Firmament which he had created, even the

heavens, their strongholds.
[First line of the 5th tablet] : — He prepared the stations of the

great gods.
[COLOPHON] : — One hundred and forty-six lines of the 4th tablet

(of the series beginning) : ' When on high unproclaimed.'
According to the papyri of the tablet whose writing had been

injured.2

1 KiMbu, see W. A. I. v. 32, 53.

2 Tsullupu. A fragmentary prayer to Merodach (R601, Rev. 12),
in which mention is made of the man who " forsakes (issir) the com
mand of Merodach" and of how " Merodach will purify thy sin" (gillati-

384 LECTURE VI.

Copied for Nebo liis lord by Xahid-Merodach, the son of the

irrigator, for the preservation of his life
and the life of all his house. He wrote and placed (it) in E-Zida."1

The legend of the great battle between light and dark
ness thus took the form of a poem addressed to Merodach,
and constituted the fourth tablet or book of the story of
the creation in days.

This story, which bears a curious resemblance to the
account of the creation in the first chapter of Genesis,
was first brought to light by Mr. George Smith. The
first tablet of the series to which it belongs opens as
follows :

" At that time the heaven above had not yet announced,
or the earth beneath recorded, a name ;
the unopened'2 deep was their generator,

Mumniu-Tiamat (the chaos of the sea) was the mother of them all.
Their waters were embosomed as one,3 and
the corn-field4 was unharvested, the pasture was ungrown.
At that time the gods had not appeared any of them,

ki Maruduk izakkii), ends with the colophon : (Bab-)ili kima tnustaldir
KHIR tsullupi, " (copy of) Babylon ; like one who causes an injured text
to be written.

1 This copy seems to have been made in the Persian age, and the
text does not appear to be always correct. This would be explained by
the statement that the original was injured. Of much older date is a
short incantation (M 1246, 3, 4) which concludes with the words : " O
lord exalted (and) great, destroy (opal) Tiamat, strike (pudhur) the
unpitying (la edheru) evil one."

2 Lapatd; Delitzsch reads, ristu, "the first-born."

3 S 1140, 8, shows that this is the meaning of istenis.

4 For gipara, see W. A. I. v. 1, 48 — 50 : D. P. Nirba kdn yiisakhnapu
giparu 6ippati summukha inbu, "the corn-god continuously caused the
corn-field to grow, the papyri were gladdened with fruit ;" and S799, 2,
ana gipdri eltu erulbi (Accadian, mi-para-ki azagga imma-dan-tuiu\
"to the holy corn-field he went down." The word has nothing to do
with "clouds" or "darkness," as has been supposed.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 385

by no name were they recorded, no destiny (bad they fixed).

Then the (great) gods were created,

Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth (the first),

until they grew up (when)

An-sar and Ki-sar were created.

Long were the days, extended (was the time, and)

the gods Anu, (Bel and Ea were horn).

An-sar and Ki-sar (gave them birth)."

The cosmogomy here presented to us bears evident
marks of its late date. The gods of the popular religion
not only have their places in the universe fixed, the period
and manner of their origin even is described. The ele
mentary spirits of the ancient Accadian faith have passed
into the great gods of Semitic belief, and been finally
resolved into mere symbolical representatives of the pri
mordial elements of the world. Under a thin disguise of
theological nomenclature, the Babylonian theory of the
universe has become a philosophic materialism. The gods
themselves come and go like mortal men ; they are the
offspring of the everlasting elements of the heaven and
earth, and of that watery abyss out of which mythology
had created a demon of evil, but which the philosopher
knew to be the mother and source of all things. The
Tiamat of the first tablet of the Creation story is a very
different being from the Tiamat of the fourth.

The old Semitic confusion between names and things
was, however, as potent as ever. Heaven and earth
existed not in the beginning because no name had been
pronounced in them, and they themselves were nameless.
It was the same with the gods. The gods, too, came into
being only when they received names. The day on whicli
the names of Lakhmu and Lakhamu were first heard was
the day on which they first " issued forth."

2c

386 LECTURE VI.

I doubt much whether the story in its present form is
older than the time of Assur-bani-pal. It is true that a
copy of the fourth tablet, originally deposited in the
temple of Nebo at Borsippa, is now in the British Museum,
but this cannot be earlier than the reign of Nebuchad
nezzar ; and although the last two words of the first line
of the story are quoted in it in an Accadian form, this
proves but little. The scribes of Assur-bani-paPs court
frequently amused themselves by composing in the old
language of Chaldoea, and the introduction of Accadian
words into their texts gave them a flavour of antiquity.

However this may be, the cosmogony of the poem
eventually found its way into the pages of a Greek writer.
Damaskios, an author of the sixth century, has preserved
an account of the cosmological system of the Babylo
nians, which he probably borrowed from some older
work.1 " The Babylonians," he tells us, a like the rest of
the barbarians, pass over in silence the one principle of the
universe, and they constitute two, Tavthe and Apason,
making Apason the husband of Tavthe, and denominating
her c the mother of the gods.' And from these proceeds
an only-begotten son, Mumis, which, I conceive, is no
other than the intelligible world proceeding from the two
principles. From them also another progeny is derived,
Lakhe and Lakhos;2 and again a third, Kissare and
Assoros ; from which last three others proceed, Anos and
Illinos and Aos. And of Aos and Davke is born a son
called Belos, who, they say, is the fabricator of the
world."

1 De Prim. Princip. 125, p. 384, ed. Kopp.

2 So we must read, in place of the Dakhe and Dakhos of the MSS.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 387

There is only one point in which the account of Da-
maskios differs from that of the cuneiform text. Mumis
or Mummu becomes in it the only son of Tavthe and
Apason, that is to say, of Tiamat and Apsu, " the deep,"
instead of being identified with Tiamat. He takes the
place of the heaven and the earth, which the Assyrian
poet represents as born of Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat.
The alteration seems to be due to a later Babylonian
striving to reconcile the Assyrian cosmological system
with the belief that Bel-Merodach was the creator of the
visible world. The birth of the gods is thus thrown back
beyond the creation of the heavens and the earth ; whereas
in the Assyrian poem, as in the first chapter of Genesis,
the creation of the heavens and the earth is placed in
the forefront.

Between the cosmogony we have just been considering
and the Babylonian cosmogony reported by Berossos, no
reconciliation is possible. In the one, Tiamat is already
the teeming mother of strange creatures before Bel Mero-
dach creates the light, and by tearing her asunder forms
the heaven and the earth. In the other, Tiamat is the
mummu, or " chaos," which, in combination with Apsu,
" the deep," produces Lakhmu and Lakhamu, from whom
Ansar and Kisar, "the hosts of heaven" and "the hosts
of earth," are begotten; and then after long ages the
gods come into existence, to whom, with Merodach the
son of Ea, the origin of all living things is ascribed. The
names of Ansar and Kisar have, however, wandered far
from their primitive signification. They have come to
represent the firmament above and the earth below— not
only the visible sky and the visible earth, but also the

2c2

388 LECTURE VI.

invisible " heaven of Ami" and the underground world
of Hades.

Like Lakhmu and Lakhamu, they were resolved into
forms of Anu and his female counterpart Anat by the
monotheistic, or rather pantheistic, school to whom I
have alluded in a former Lecture. It was to this pan
theistic school that the materialistic school of the cosmo-
gonists was most sharply opposed. In the lists in which
the views of the pantheistic school find expression, Lakh
mu and Lakhamu appear as Lakhma, or Lukhma, and
Lakhama, an indication that the names are of non-Semitic
origin. It is possible that they denote the element of
" purity" presupposed by the creation of the world out
of the watery abyss. At all events, they are placed in
one of the lists between Du-eri and Da-eri, " the children
of the state," and E-kur and E-sarra, " the temples of
earth and heaven." Like so many of the Babylonian
deities, their names and worship were probably carried
to Canaan. Lakhmi seems to be the name of a Philistine
in 1 Chron. xx. 5, and Beth-lehem is best explained as
" the house of Lekhem," like Beth-Dagon, " the house of
Dagon," or Beth-Anoth, " the house of Anat."1

It is unfortunate that the Assyrian cosmological poem
has reached us only in a fragmentary state. The latter
part of the first tablet is lost, and the second and third
tablets have not yet been recovered. The first half of the
fifth tablet, however, is complete; and. as it describes

1 Lakhmu is mentioned but rarely in the inscriptions. His name,
however, occurs in K 2866, 18, between those of Gula and Rimmon.
Perhaps it is connected etymologically with Lakhamun, the name of
Zarpanit in Dilvun,

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 389

the creation of the heavenly bodies, we may compare it
with the work of the fourth day according to Genesis,
more especially as the Assyrian poet assigns to the fourth
tablet the overthrow of Tiamat and her hosts. It begins
thus:

" (Aim) prepared the (seven) mansions of the great gods;
he fixed the stars, even the twin-stars, to correspond to them ;
he ordained the year, appointing the signs of the Zodiac1 over it ;
for each of the twelve months he fixed three stars,
from the day when the year issues forth to the close.
He founded the mansion of the god of the ferry-boat (the Sun-god)

that they might know their bonds,

that they might not err, that they might not go astray in any way.
He established the mansion of Mul-lil and Ea along with himself.
He opened also the great gates on either side,
the bolts he strengthened on the left hand and on the right,
and in their midst he made a staircase.

He illuminated the Moon-god that he might watch over the night,
and ordained for him the ending of the night that the day may be

known,
(saying) : ' Month by month, without break, keep watch (I) in thy

disk ;

at the beginning of the month kindle the night,
announcing (thy) horns that the heaven may know.
On the seventh day, (filling thy) disk,
thou shalt open indeed (its) narrow contraction.2
At that time the sun (will be) on the horizon of heaven at thy

(rising).'"

The rest of the text is in too mutilated a condition
to offer a connected sense, and we may therefore pass on
to another fragment which perhaps belongs to the seventh
tablet. At all events it records the creation of the
animals. "At that time," it declares,

1 Mizrdta yumazzir. Oppert and Schrader have misunderstood the
expression. Mizrdta is the mazzdrotli of Job xxxviii. 32.

2 Sutkhurat me$kkir(rdti sa pu-)u.

390 LECTURE VI.

" The gods in their assembly created (the beasts) ;
they made perfect the mighty (monsters) ;
they caused the living creatures of the (field) to come forth,
the cattle of the field, the wild beasts of the field, and the creep
ing things of the (field) ;

(they fixed their habitations) for the living creatures (of the field),
(and) adorned (the dwelling-places of) the cattle and creeping things

of the city.

(They made strong) the multitude of creeping things, all the off
spring (of the earth)."

The lines that follow are too much broken for transla
tion ; the only matter of remark which they contain is a
statement put into the mouth of some deity that he had
" destroyed the seed of Lakhama." Here, therefore,
there seems to be a clear reference to the monstrous brood
of chaos which the ancient cosmogony of Cutha regarded
as the offspring of Tiamat. The place of Tiamat has
been taken by the cosmological principle Lakhama, and
the crude conceptions of an earlier day have been worked
into the philosophical system of the later cosmology.

The Babylonian Genesis, then, it will be seen, is
neither simple nor uniform. Its history forms a close
parallel to the history of the Babylonian pantheon. Like
the pantheon, it is essentially local in character ; but the
local elements have been combined eventually so as to
form that great epic of the Creation whose fragments
have come to us from the library of Nineveh. Local,
however, as these elements were in their origin, they all
agree in certain main particulars. In each case the
watery abyss is the primary source of all things ; in each
case the present creation has been preceded by another.
How far these common features are due to the compara
tive lateness of the documents from which we derive our

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 391

information we cannot say. For my own part, I suspect
that the legend of Cutha originally knew nothing of the
sea-serpent Tiamat, the chaotic hosts of which it speaks
having been the progeny of the mountains and not of
the deep. But in its present form it agrees with all the
other Babylonian cosmogonies that have been preserved,
in making Tiamat their mother and nurse. The Baby
lonian of the historical period was firmly persuaded that
in the ocean-stream that encircled the world lay the
germs of the whole universe.

This belief stands in marked contrast to that pre
historic belief in a " mountain of the world" which sur
vived only in mythology. ISTo doubt the two conceptions
could be reconciled by those who undertook the trouble ;
it was possible to hold that this mountain of the world
was not the central shaft around which the earth and
heavens were built, but merely the centre of the existing
world. If this view was not generally taken, if in Baby
lonia, hard by the Persian Gulf, the world-mountain
was allowed to drop out of sight, it must have been
because the ideas associated with it did not readily com
bine with the cosmological theories of a later day. At
any rate, the cosmologies of Babylonia, whatever might
be the locality in which they were taught, were all based
on the assumption that the watery abyss was the first of
things.

This assumption agrees strikingly with the character
of the Sumerian culture-god. Ea, the god of Eridu,
Cannes who rose out of the Persian Gulf, was primarily
a water-god. His home was in the deep ; his mother
was the watery abyss. "We shall not go far wrong if we
trace the fundamental doctrine of Chaldean cosmology

392 LECTURE VI.

to Eridu and its worship of the deities of the deep.
Eridu did not communicate to the rest of Babylonia only
the seeds of culture or the adoration of Ea, the god of
wisdom ; it impressed upon all the cosmogonies of Baby
lonia the stamp of its own, and originated that view oi
the origin of the world which found its western prophet
in the first of Hellenic philosophers. Like so much else
that had its primal home in Shinar, it was carried west
ward to the shores of the Mediterranean. Phoenician
cosmology also began with an abyss of waters in which
the seeds of all things were begotten;1 and even the
Hebrew writer tells us that "in the beginning," before
Elohim " carved out the heavens and the earth," "the
earth had been waste and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep."

It does not seem, however, that the belief in a pro
visional creation, in the existence of composite animals
who perished when the present world came into being,
can have emanated from Eridu. At Eridu the deep was
not the representative of chaos and confusion ; quite the
contrary, it was a venerable divinity, the mother of Ea
himself. So far, moreover, from the composite animals
of mythology being subjects of abhorrence, Oannes, the
god of culture, the god of pure life, as the inscriptions
term him, was actually one of them. It was he who is
described in the fragment of Berossos as half-human, with
the tail of a fish.

These composite creatures were really the offspring of
totemism and the attempts of a later age to explain the
figures which totemism had bequeathed to art and mytho-

1 Euseb. Prcep. Evang. i. 10; Damasldos, De Prim. Princip. 123,
p. 381, ed. Kopp.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 393

logy. A place had to be found for the colossal bulls with
human heads and eagles' wings, for the hawk-headed
cherubs who guarded the tree of life, for "the scorpion-
men" who watched the sun at his rising and setting, or
for the centaurs, half-man and half -horse, whose forms are
engraved on Babylonian boundary-stones, and who passed
over to the Greeks through Phoenician hands. Many of
these, it is true, were beneficent beings, like the man-
headed bulls * but the majority belonged to those spirits
of the earth and air against whom the sorcerer-priest had
prepared his spells. They had no place or portion in the
existing order of the universe ; when, therefore, Tiamat
had become a cosmological principle, symbolised by the
serpent or dragon and opposed to the gods of light, it
was easy to banish them all to her domain and to regard
her as their mother and nurse.

It may be that this was the work of the priests of
Babylon. At any rate, Bel-Merodach is credited with
having been their destroyer, as he was also the destroyer
of Tiamat herself ; and it is difficult to believe that this
belief grew up anywhere else than in the city which
owned Merodach as its lord. It is certainly noticeable
thatBerossos refers to the images of the monsters painted
in vermilion on the walls of the temple of Merodach when
he is describing the strange creatures of the pre-human
world.

In the epic of the Creation, whether or not it owes its
existence, as I have suggested, to an Assyrian poet of
the age of Assur-bani-pal, we may see the final unifica
tion of the varying cosmological legends of Babylonia.
They are here combined and harmonised together ; and
though the whole is thrown into a mythological form, as

394 LECTURE VI.

befits the requirements of poetry, its spirit is unmistak
ably materialistic. In spite of the fragmentary condition
in which it has come down to us, it is possible to guess
at the order of its arrangement by comparing it with the
first chapter of Genesis.

The first tablet or book was occupied with the cosmo
gony proper and the creation of the gods. The birth of
the gods of light necessarily brought with it the creation
of the light itself. This would have been followed by a
second tablet, in which the creation of the firmament of
heaven was described. The gods needed a habitation,
and this was provided by the firmament of the sky. A
mythological tablet, it will be remembered, states that
"the heaven was created from the waters," before that
" the god and goddess," or Ansar and Kisar, " created
the earth," in exact agreement with the account in Genesis.
Here, too, the firmament of the heaven is created out
of the waters of the deep on the second day, dividing
" the waters which were under the firmament from the
waters which were above the firmament," while the earth
does not emerge above the surface of the deep until the
third day. It is therefore probable that the third tablet
of the A ssyro-Baby Ionian epic recounted the formation
of the earth. Unlike the Biblical narrative, however, in
place of the vegetable creation of the third day, it would
seem to have interpolated here the appearance of the
brood of chaos. The legend of Cutha declares that when
the earth was peopled by them, there were as yet neither
"bodies nor brushwood," neither the animal nor the
vegetable world of to-day. However this may be, the
fourth tablet recorded the great struggle between Mero-
dach and Tiamat, of which no trace appears in the book

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY 395

of Genesis, though, we seem to have allusions to a similar
conflict in the spiritual world in other parts of the Bible.
In Isaiah xxiy. 21, 22, we read " that the Lord shall
visit the host of the high ones that are on high, and the
kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be
gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit,
and shall be shut up in prison;" while a well-known
passage in the Apocalypse (xii. 7 — 9) tells how "there
was war in heaven : Michael and his angels fought against
the dragon ; and the dragon fought and his angels, and
prevailed not; neither was their place found any more
in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old
serpent, called the Devil, and Satan." The fifth tablet,
as we have seen, was concerned with the appointment of
the heavenly bodies, the work of the fourth day in
Genesis ; the sixth probably related the creation of vege
tables, birds and fish; and the seventh that of animals
and mankind.1 In two respects, therefore, the epic
would have differed from the Biblical account : firstly, in
the interpolation of the appearance of the monsters of
chaos and of the combat between Merodach and the
dragon ; and secondly, in making the seventh day a day
of work and not of rest.

The epic never succeeded wholly in supplanting what
we may regard as the local legend of the Creation current
at Babylon. Its cosmogony was indeed known to Da-

1 A passage in one of the magical texts indicates that a similar view
as to the creation of the woman from the man prevailed in Babylonia, to
that which we read of in the book of Genesis. In W. A. I. iv. 1.
i. 36, 37, it is said of the seven evil spirits : " the woman from the
loins of the man they bring forth," in conformity with the Semitic
belief which derived the woman from the man. This part of the magical
text, at all events, must belong to the Semitic period.

396 LECTURE VI.

maskios, and doubtless suited the philosophic conceptions
of the Greeco-Roman age far better than the older crea
tion-stories of Babylonia; but it is ignored by Berossos,
who collected the materials of his narrative from the
priests of Bel-Merodach at Babylon. As one of their
order himself, he preferred to give their own version of
the creation of the world, rather than a version which
was less peculiarly Babylonian, however consonant the
latter might be with the opinions of his Greek readers.

The contents of the fifth tablet introduce us to a side
of Babylonian religion which occupied an important and
prominent position, at all events in the official cult. At
the beginning of the present century, writers upon the
ancient East were fond of enlarging upon a Sabaistic
system of faith which they supposed had once been the
dominant form of religion in "Western Asia. Star- worship
was imagined to be the most primitive phase of Oriental
religion, and the reference to it in the book of Job was
eagerly seized upon as an evidence of the antiquity of
the book. Dupuis resolved all human forms of faith into
Zodiacal symbols, and Sir William Drummond went far
in the same direction. That the first gods of the heathen
were the planets and stars of heairen, was regarded by
high authorities as an incontrovertible fact.

The plains of Shinar were held to be the earliest home
of this Sabaism or star-worship. The astronomy and astro
logy of Babylonia had been celebrated even by Greek and
Latin authors, and scholars were inclined to see in the
" Chaldeean shepherds'7 the first observers of the heavens.
The " astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognos
ticates" of Babylon, are enumerated in the Old Testa
ment (Is. xlvii. 13); and the small cylinders brought by

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 397

travellers from Bagdad, with their frequent representations
of a star or sun, seemed to leave no doubt that the deities
of Babylonia were in truth the heavenly bodies. The
decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has shown
that the belief in Babylonian "Sabaism" was, after all,
not altogether a chimsera.

Babylonia was really the cradle of astronomical obser
vations. Long before the lofty zigurrdti or " towers" of
the temples were reared, where the royal astronomers
had their stations and from whence they sent their reports
to the king, the leading groups of stars had been named,
a calendar had been formed, and the eclipses of the sun
and moon had been noted and recorded. The annual
path of the sun through the sky had been divided into
twelve sections, like the twelve Icasbu or double hours ot
the day, and each section had been distinguished by its
shief constellation or star. It was thus that the Zodiac
first came into existence. The names given to its con
stellations are not only Accadian, but they also go back
to the totemistic age of Accadian faith. The first sign,
the first constellation, was that of "the directing bull,"
so named from the solar bull who at the vernal equinox
began to plough his straight furrow through the sky,
directing thereby the course of the year. The last sign
but one was "the fish of Ea;" while midway between
the two, presiding over the month whose name was
derived from its " facing the foundation" or " beginning"
of the year, was the great star of the Scorpion. The
fact that the year thus began with Taurus proves the
antiquity of the Chaldsean Zodiac, and of the months
of thirty days which corresponded to its several signs.
From about B.C. 2500 and onwards, the precession of

398 LECTURE YJ.

the equinoxes caused Aries, and not Taurus, to be the
asterism into which the sun entered at spring-time ; the
period when Taurus ushered in the year reached back
from that date to about B.C. 4700. The Zodiacal circle
may therefore have been invented nearly a thousand
years before Sargon of Accad was born ; and that it was
invented at an early epoch is demonstrated by its close
connection with the Accadian calendar.

With the Semitic domination of Sargon of Accad,
however, Babylonian astronomy entered upon a new
phase. To him, tradition ascribed the compilation of the
standard work on Babylonian astronomy and astrology
called the " Observations of Bel," and afterwards translated
into Greek by Berossos. But the edition of the work
which we possess presupposes a much later date. Aries,
and not Taurus, marks the beginning of the year, and
the text contains references to political and geographical
facts, some of which are probably not much older than
the age of Assur-bani-pal. This is explained by the
nature of the work. It was not so much a treatise on
astronomy, as on the pseudo-science that had been evolved
out of the observations of astronomy. The Chaldsean
priests had grasped but imperfectly the idea of causation ;
their fundamental assumption was " post hoc, ergo propter
hoc;" when two events had been noticed to happen one
after the other, the first was the cause of the second.
Hence their anxiety to record the phenomena of the
heavens and the occurrences that took place after each ;
if a war with Elam had followed an eclipse of the sun on
a particular day, it was assumed that a recurrence of the
eclipse on the same day would be followed by a recur
rence of a war with Elam. In this way a science of

COSMOGONIES AND ASTltO-THEOLOGY 399

astrology was created whose students could foretel the
future by observing the signs of the sky.

It is obvious that a work whose object was to connect
astronomical observations with current events must have
been constantly undergoing alteration and growth. ISTew
observations would from time to time be introduced into
it, sometimes causing confusion or even omissions in the
text. There are instances in which we can detect the
presence of observations placed side by side, though
belonging to very different periods, or of older records
which have been supplemented by the calculations of a
later age.1 In their present form, therefore, the " Obser
vations of Bel" have to be used with caution if we would
argue from them to the beliefs and practices of early
Babylonia.

But the astrological science, or pseudo-science, which
underlies the whole work, shows that even in its earliest
form it was a product of the Semitic epoch. Between
the attitude of mind presupposed by this pseudo-science,
and the attitude of mind presupposed by the magical
texts and Shamanistic cult of Sumerian Chalda3a, there
lies an impassable gulf. According to the latter, events
are brought about by the agency of the innumerable
spirits of earth and air, and can be controlled by the
spells and exorcisms of the sorcerer; according to the
astrologer of Sargon's court, they are natural occurrences,
caused and determined by other natural occurrences

1 See the examination of the Venus-tablet (W. A. I. iii. 63), by Mr.
Bosanquet and myself in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astrono
mical Society, xl. 9, pp. 572, 578, where it is shown that a later
scribe has interpolated a series of fabricated observations in the middle
of an older and genuine record.

400 LECTURE VI.

which can be discovered and noted by the observer.
Out of the astrologer the astronomer could be born;
between science and sorcery there can be only an eternal
feud.

It does not follow, however, that the pre-Semitic
population of Chaldsea took no notice of the phenomena
of the sky. Unusual phenomena, such as an eclipse, must
necessarily excite the attention of superstitious and half-
civilised tribes; and the formation of a calendar, the
invention of the Zodiac, and the naming of the principal
constellations, show that a rudimentary astronomy was
already in existence. Indeed, the " Observations of Bel"
not only contain technical terms of Accadian origin, but
embody notices of phenomena like eclipses which pre
suppose a long period of earlier observations. Unless
such observations had existed, even the first compilation
of the work would have been impossible. It was astro
logy, not the rudiments of astronomy, for which the
Semites of Babylonia can claim the entire credit.

In the " Observations of Bel" the stars are already
invested with a divine character. The planets are gods
like the sun and moon, and the stars have already been
identified with certain deities of the ofncial pantheon, or
else have been dedicated to them. The whole heaven, as
well as the periods of the moon, has been divided between
the three supreme divinities, Anu, Bel and Ea. In fact,
there is an astro -theology, a system of Sabaism, as it
would have been called half a century ago.

This astro-theology must go back to the very earliest
times. The cuneiform characters alone are a proof of
this. The common determinative of a deity is an eight-
rayed star, a clear evidence that at the period when the

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO -THEOLOGY. 401

cuneiform syllabary assumed the shape in which we know
it, the stars were accounted divine. We have seen, more
over, that the sun and moon and evening star were
objects of worship from a remote epoch, and the sacred-
ness attached to them would naturally have been reflected
upon the other heavenly bodies with which they were
associated. Totemism, too, implies a worship of the stars.
We find that primitive peoples confound them with
animals, their automatic motions being apparently expli
cable by no other theory ; and that primitive Chaldasa
was no exception to this rule has been already pointed
out. Here, too, the sun was an ox, the moon was a
steer, and the planets were sheep. The adoration of
the stars, like the adoration of the sun and moon, must
have been a feature of the religion of primaeval Shinar.

But this primaeval adoration was something very dif
ferent from the elaborate astro-theology of a later day.
So elaborate, indeed, is it that we can hardly believe it
to have been known beyond the circle of the learned
classes. The stars in it became the symbols of the official
deities. Nergal, for example, under his two names of
Sar-nerra and 'Sulim-ta-ea, was identified with Jupiter
and Mars.1 It is not difficult to discover how this
curious theological system arose. Its starting-point was
the prominence given to the worship of the evening and
morning stars in the ancient religion, and their subsequent
transformation into the Semitic Istar. The other planets
were already divine ; and their identification with specific
deities of the official cult followed as a matter of course.
As the astronomy of Babylonia became more developed,
as the heavens were mapped out into groups of constel-
1 W. A. I. iii. 57, 52.

2D

402 LECTTJRT] VI.

lations, each of which received a definite name, while the
leading single stars were similarly distinguished and
named, the stars and constellations followed the lead of
the planets. As Mars became Nergal, so Orion became
Tammuz.

The priest had succeeded the old Sumerian sorcerer,
and was now transforming himself into an astrologer. To
this cause we must trace the rise of Babylonian astro-
theology and the deification of the stars of heaven. The
Sabianism of the people of Harran in the early centuries
of the Christian era was no survival of a primitive faith,
but the last echo of the priestly astro-theology of Baby
lonia. This astro-theology had been a purely artificial
system, the knowledge of which, like the knowledge of
astrology itself, was confined to the learned classes. It
first grew up in the court of Sargon of Accad, but its
completion cannot be earlier than the age of Kham-
muragas. In no other way can we explain the pro
minence given in it to Merodach, the god of Babylon.

But side by side with this " cunningly -devised"
system of theology, the ancient cult of the stars — not as
manifestations or symbols of the official gods, but as
divine beings themselves — maintained itself not only
among the multitude, but among the higher orders as
well. The hemerology of the intercalary Elul, enume
rating the feasts and fasts of the month and the religious
services to be performed on each, states that the tenth
day was sacred to the Lady of the Lower Firmament
(Bilat-Ekur) and the divine judges of the starry sky,
and that offerings and sacrifices should be made during
the night of it to two particular stars.1 Towards the
* W. A. I. iv, 32, 47—50. See above, p. 72.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 403

close of the Assyrian empire, we find an Assyrian scribe
similarly laying down that the king should offer sacrifices
" before the stars, before Assur, before Merodach," and
other gods.1 The stars, be it noticed, here take the first
place, even before Assur, the god of Assyria, and Mero-
dach, the god of Babylon, and hold the same rank as the
colossal bulls and sacred rivers mentioned by the same
author as objects of veneration.2

In a country which owed so much to its great rivers
as Babylonia, we should naturally expect to find traces
of river-worship. And such indeed is the case. But
the rivers of Babylonia were not, like the Mle, the
bringers of unmixed good. They might indeed be termed
"the bearers of fertility," but their destructive floods
needed curbing by dams and canals ; and " the curse of
rain" that descended on the land during the winter
months made the rivers also curses instead of blessings.
Hence it was that, by the side of the cult paid to the
streams, and more especially to the supreme river-god,
the divine Euphrates, in whom the people of Eridu had
seen the features of Ea, there was a feeling of dread and
fear, which prevented the cult from attaining its full
development. Nevertheless, an old Accadian text declares
that " the name of the man shall perish who destroys the
body of a river ;"3 and a Semitic hymn, which is prefaced
by the word siptu, " incantation," addresses the river
(Euphrates ?) in words of adoration and respect :4

1 W. A. I. iii. 66, Rev. 12 sq.

2 W. A. I. iii 66, Obv. 30—33.

8 W. A. I. ii. 17, 26, completed by Strassmaier.
4 S 1704, Rev.

2 D 2

404 LECTURE VI.

"Thou, 0 river, I have made thee I1
At the time I dug thee, the great gods (were) on thy bank.
Ea, the king of the deep, has created blessings in thy heart.
He lias presented his deluge before thee.
Fire, might, brilliance (and) terribleness
have Ea and Merodach presented unto thee.
Judgment (?) hast thou given mankind,
O mighty river, river supreme of limb.2
Grant me (to bathe in) the straight course of thy waters.
The (impurity) which is in my body to thy channel carry it, even

to the channel.3

(Take) it, bear it down into thy stream.
(Deliver) me, and it shall not come nigh my altar.
(Purify) my sin that I may live.
May I glorify (that which the god) has created.
May I exalt (ludlul) (thy) spring (enu)."*

Side by side with this primitive worship of rivers and

1 Atti, ndru, ebusu kasum.

2 Dityni teniseti tadin atti ndru rabiti, ndru tsiriti mesreti.
8 Sa ina zumri-ya basu (KI-PUR = ) kibir-ki uri-su kibir-ki.

* Here several lines are lost. The text becomes legible again in the
fourth line of the obverse, from which it appears that the tablet con
tains charms against the bites of serpents. The lines which are legible
read as follows :

" Save me (suzibaninni) from the venom .of these serpents.
Myself and my house never may it destroy, never may it poison,

never may it approach ;
never may it overcome me ; may it cross the river, may it pass

over my life.
[Lacuna] pouring their poison into my body like the star-coloured

bird (tarri).
May it mount to heaven like an arrow, pouring forth the zikhi of

its mission.

May (the serpents), 0 lord, be far from my body.
May they depart , . . and let me glorify your LUL-GIR.
Let me exalt (ludlul) the making of your god, 0 Ea, Samas and

Merodach."

The last line shows that we have here to do with a product of the
school of Sippara, as the name of Samas is interpolated between the
old god of healing spells and his ministering son.

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 405

springs, we find traces of a worship of the mountains.
But this worship belonged rather to the days when the
early colonists of Chaldsea had not as yet descended from
the mountains of the East, and its traces are a survival,
assisted perhaps by the conquest of the country in the
historical epoch by the Kosssean highlanders. At any
rate, in Babylonia itself the primitive cult of the moun
tains could be carried on only artificially. The sacred
mountains of the plain were the mounds which marked
the sites of ancient temples, or the towers which rose
within them in order that the priest might continue on
their summits that close communion with heaven which
he had once enjoyed on the high places of the mountain-
tops. In the story of the Deluge, the mountain peak of
Mzir, where the rescued hero of the legend built his
altar and poured out his offerings, is called a ziggurrat,
or temple -tower. Conversely, "the mountain of the
world" was the name given to a temple at Calah; and
the mountain of 'Sabu, to which the god Zu took his flight,
was Kharsak-kalama, "the mountain of mankind," an
artificial mound near Kis. The most famous of these
sacred tels or mounds, however, was the famous tilu ellu,
"the illustrious mound," at Borsippa, now represented
by the Birs-i-Mmrud. Nebo, to whom the great temple
of Borsippa was dedicated, is called its god (W. A. I. ii.
54, 71). One of "the three great" or secret "names of
Ami" was that of " the lord who issues forth from the
illustrious mound" (W.A.I, iii. 68, 19), in reference to
the fact that the Accadian prototype of ISTebo was once
the universe itself, in which the seven spheres of light
were set, and around which the ocean-stream wound like
a rope or serpent. When the old god of Borsippa had

406 LECTURE VI.

passed into the Semitic Nebo, the attributes which had
formerly connected him with the firmament of heaven
were transferred to Ami, the sky-god of the official cult.

A fragmentary tablet, which gives us, as I believe, the
Babylonian version of the building of the tower of Babel,
expressly identifies it with "the illustrious mound.''
Here we are told of the leader of the rebellion that when
"the thought of his heart was hostile" and he "had
wronged the father of all the gods," when "he was
hurrying to seize Babylon," and "small and great were
mingling the mound," "the divine king of the illustrious
mound" intervened, " Ami lifted up (his hand) in front"
and prayed "to his father the lord of the firmament."
"All day long he troubled" them; "as they lamented
on their couch he ended not" their "distress." "In
his wrath he overthrows (their) secret counsel; in his
(fury) he set his face to mingle (their) designs ; he gave
the command (?), he made strange their plan."1 The
very word that the Hebrew writer uses in order to
explain the origin of the name of Babylon, and which
the Authorised Version translates "confound," is here
employed of those who "mingled together" the mound,
and whose designs were afterwards themselves " mingled"
by the god of heaven.

"The illustrious mound" was known as far back as
the time when the months of the Accadian year were
named. The month which corresponded to the Semitic
Tasrit or Tisri, and our September, was " the month of
the illustrious mound." It would seem, therefore, that
legend had referred the attempt to build the tower whose

1 The text has been published by Mr. Boscawen in the Transactions
of the Society of Biblical Archceolo^ v. L

COSMOGONIES AND ASTKO-THEOLOGY. 407

head should reach to heaven to the autumnal equinox ;
at any rate, it is clear that the mound of Borsippa was
not only in existence, but was already in a state of ruin
when the Accadian calendar was first drawn up.

The sacred mounds of Babylonia, in fact, like the
Gilgals of Palestine, appear to have been the sites of
older structures which had long fallen into decay, and
around which fancy and tradition were allowed to play
freely. They had in this way become veritable hills —
tumuli, as we should term them in our modern archaeo
logical vocabulary — and as such deserved the venerable
title of sad^ or " mountain." New temples like that of
"the mountain of the world" could be named after them,
but this did not imply a recollection that the sacred
mounds had once been temples themselves. They were
rather, like the mountains of the eastern frontier, the
everlasting altars of the gods, on whose summits worship
could most fittingly be paid to the deities of heaven.
And, like the mountains, they were something more than
altars ; they were themselves divine, the visible habita
tions of the spirits of the air. It is possible that Prof.
Friedrich Delitzsch is right in proposing to see in the
Assyrian sadu, or " mountain," the explanation of the
Hebrew title of the Deity, El Shaddai.1 At all events,
God is compared to a rock in the Old Testament (Deut.
xxxii. 15, Ps. xviii. 2), and the worship of sacred stones
was widely spread through the Semitic world.

1 Mul-lil is called kur-gal, sadu rabu in Semitic, "the great mountain,"
W.A.I, iv. 18, 15; 23, 30; and in v. 44, 41, "the god Kur-gal" is
rendered by Bel. In the list of Babylonian kings in which the mean
ing of their jianies is explained, the Accadian E-Guzi-kharsag-men is
interpreted E-Saggil-saddu-ni, " E-Saggil is our mountain."

408 LECTURE VI.

Between the sacred mounds of Babylonia, however,
and the sacred stones of Semitic faith, there was a wide
difference, answering to a difference in the minds of the
two races to whom these separate cults belonged. The
sacred stone was a Beth-el, or " house of god ;" no habita
tion of a mere spirit, but the dwelling-place of deity itself.
Its sanctity was not inherent ; it was sacred because it
had been transformed into an altar by the oil that was
poured out upon it in libation, or the priest who was
consecrated to its service. The worship of these sacred
stones was common to all the branches of the Semitic
family. The famous black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca
is a standing witness of the fact. So firmly rooted was
the belief in its divine character among the Arabs of
Mohammed's day that he was unable to eradicate it, but
was forced to make a compromise with the old faith by
attaching to the stone the traditions of the Old Testament.
The black stone, though more sacred than any others, did
not stand alone. All around Mecca there were similar
stones, termed Anzab, three of which may still be seen,
according to Mr. Doughty, at the gates of the city, where
they go by the names of Hobbal, Lata and Uzza. North
ward of Mecca, at Medain-Saleh, the burial-place of the
ancient kingdom of the Nabathaeans, Mr. Doughty has
discovered niches in the rock containing sacred stones.
Above one of them is an inscription which shows that
the stone was the symbol or habitation of the god Auda
(or Aera) : " This is the place of prayer which Seruh
the son of Tuka has erected to Auda of Bostra, the great
god, in the month Msan of the first year of king Malkhos."
Within the last few years, bas-reliefs have been found in
Sicily and Tunisia representing persons in the act of

COSMOGONIES AND ASTRO-THEOLOGY. 409

adoration before a small triad of stone. "We are here on
Phoenician territory, and it is not strange therefore that
classical writers should speak of the BcuVvAot or Beth-els,
the meteoric stones which had fallen from heaven like
" the image" of Artemis at Ephesos, and were accord
ingly honoured by the Phoenicians. In the mythology
of Byblos, Heaven and Earth were said to have had four
sons, Ilos or El, Betylos or Beth-el, Dagon and Atlas ;
and the god of heaven was further declared to have
invented the Baityli, making of them living stones.1
Bethuel is connected with Aram in the Old Testament
(Gen. xxii. 21, 22); and we all remember how, on his way
to Haran, Jacob awakened out of sleep, saying, " Surely
the Lord is in this place," and "took the stone that he
had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and
poured oil upon the top of it, and called the name of that
place Beth-el." In Palestine, however, the Beth-els were
arranged in a circle or Gilgal, rather than singly ; the
isolated monuments were the cones of stone or the bare
tree-trunks which symbolised Asherah, the goddess of
fertility, and Baal the Sun-god. The sun-pillars and
the asherim meet with frequent mention in the Biblical
records; and we may gain some idea as to what the latter
were like from the pictures we have on coins and gems
of the famous conical stone that stood within the holy of
holies in the temple of the Paphian Aphrodite, as well as
from the description given of it by Tacitus.2 On a gem

1 Euseb. Prcep. Evang. i. 10. Halevy's arguments against the iden
tification of Baitylos and the Beth-el amount to very JiUJft,

2 Hist. ii. 2 : " Simulacrum deaa uon effigie humana, continuus orbis
latiore initio tenuem in ambitum metis modo exsurircus."

410 LECTURE VI.

in the British Museum, Sin, " the god of Hamui," is repre
sented by a stone of the same shape surmounted by a
star. The " pillars of the Sun" were also stones of a like
form. "When the Phoenician temple in the island of Gozo,
whose ruins are known as the Temple of the Giants, was
excavated, two such columns of stone were found, planted
in the ground, one of which still remains in situ. We
cannot forget that even in Solomon's temple, built as it
was by Phoenician workmen, there were two columns of
stone, Boaz and Yakin, set on either side of the porch
(1 Kings vii. 21), like the two columns of gold and
emerald glass which Herodotos saw in the temple of
Melkarth at Tyre (Herodt. ii. 44).

The sacred stones which were thus worshipped in
Arabia, in Phoenicia and in Syria, were worshipped also
among the Semites of Babylonia. There is a curious
reference to the consecration of a Beth-el in the Epic of
Gisdhubar. "When the hero had been dismissed by the
Chaldsean Noah, and his sickness had been carried away
by the waters of the sea, we are told that " he bound
together heavy stones," and after taking an animal for
sacrifice, " poured over it a homer " in libation. He
then commenced his homeward voyage up the Euphrates,
having thus secured the goodwill of heaven for his
undertaking.1

1 TV. A. I. iv. 51, v. 52. vi. 1 — 4. The stones or asherim which
had thus been consecrated by oil being poured over them, are frequently
mentioned in the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions under the name
of kisalli. Kisallu is a word borrowed from the Accadian ki-zal, " place
of oil" or " anointing," and represented the " altar," so often depicted on
Assyrian gems and bas-reliefs, which consisted of an upright post or
column, sometimes with an extinguisher-like top. A good representation
of three of these columns, of different forms, will be seen on a Phoeni-

COSMOGONIES AND ASTKO-THEOLOGY. 411

The homeward voyage of the Chaldeean hero is a
reminder that we, too, have finished our survey of Baby
lonian religion, so far as our present knowledge of it will
allow. Two facts in regard to it stand prominently
forth; its essentially local character, and its hybrid
origin. We cannot understand even its most elementary
features unless we bear in mind that it is the product of
different races and different political systems. In detail,
indeed, it may not always be easy to distinguish between
Accadian and Semitic, or between the gods of Eridu and
the gods of Babylon ; but the main outlines of the picture
are clear and distinct, and any attempt to obliterate or
forget them will lead only to confusion and error. That
the materials are still wanting for a complete history of
the rise and development of Babylonian religion, I am
only too well aware ; but where completeness is unattain
able, even an imperfect sketch has its merits and value.
And the importance of Babylonian religion to the student
of theology need not be pointed out. Apart from its
general interest in illustrating the history of religion
among one of the few races of mankind who have been
the pioneers of civilisation, it has a special interest from
its bearing on the faiths of Western Asia, and more espe
cially on that of the people of Israel. If I have not
more frequently drawn attention to the latter, it has been
due to my desire to keep faithfully to the subject of my
Lectures. I have undertaken to treat of Babylonian reli
gion only, not of Semitic religion in general. For such

cian gem procured by Dr. Hayes Ward at Bagdad, and published by
him in the American Journal of Archaeology, June 1886, p. 156. They
correspond to the "sun-pillars" and asherim, or symbols of the goddess
Asherah, so frequently alluded to in the Old Testament.

412 LECTURE VI.

a task there are others far more competent than myself ;
great Arabic or Syriac or Hebrew scholars, who have
devoted their lives to the study of one or more of these
better-known Semitic tongues. My own studies have of
late years lain more and more in the ever- widening circle
of Assyrian research; here there is enough, and more
than enough, to fill the whole time and absorb the whole
energies of the worker ; and he must be content to confine
himself to his own subject, and by honest labour therein
to accumulate the facts which others more fortunate than
he may hereafter combine and utilise. This is the day of
specialists; the increased application of the scientific
method and the rapid progress of discovery have made
it difficult to do more than note and put together the
facts that are constantly crowding one upon the other
in a special branch of research. The time may come
again — nay, will come again — when once more the ever-
flowing stream of discovery will be checked, and famous
scholars and thinkers will arise to reap the harvest that
we have sown. Meanwhile I claim only to be one of the
humble labourers of our own busy age, who have done
my best to set before you the facts and theories we may
glean from the broken sherds of Nineveh, so far as they
bear upon the religion of the ancient Babylonians. It is
for others, whose studies have taken a wider range, to
make use of the materials I have endeavoured to collect,
and to discover in them, if they can, guides and beacons
towards a purer form of faith than that which can be
found in the official creeds of our modern world.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

i.

THE primitive language and population of Chaldsea have excited so
much discussion, and the views held on the subject by Assyriologists
have undergone so much modification as their knowledge of the inscrip
tions has become more extensive and exact, that it is necessary for me
to state precisely the conclusions to which, as it seems to me, the
evidence now at our disposal would lead us. Others besides Assyrian
students are probably aware that the question has aroused more than
one fierce controversy ; every step in advance has been gained after a
good deal of fighting ; and not only the name and relationship of the
pre-Semitic language of Babylonia, but its priority to the Semitic
Babylonian and even its very existence, have been made the subjects of
animated discussion. The discussion, it is true, has usually been the
result of misunderstandings and errors, of hasty conclusions and misin
terpreted facts ; but in this respect it has not differed widely from
most other discussions in science or theology.

The decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions had not proceeded
far before it became clear that the Assyrian syllabary was not of
Semitic origin. This, at least, seemed to the first decipherers the most
natural way of accounting for the curious fact that the characters pos
sessed phonetic values which did not correspond to the Semitic words
represented by the same characters when used ideographically. Tho
character which denoted "a head," for example, not only possessed the
Semitic value of m, but also the non-Semitic value of sag. Moreover,
the syllabary expressed very imperfectly the sounds of a Semitic lan
guage. The distinctive Semitic sounds of ayin, teth and tsadde, were
wanting in it, or else represented defectively. In place of the clear
pronunciation of the consonants which distinguishes a Semitic idiom,
it was found that surds and sonants were confounded together at the
end of a syllable. It appeared evident, therefore, that the syllabary,
the pictorial origin of which was soon recognised, must have been

416 APPENDIX I.

invented by a non-Semitic people, and handed on by them to the
Semitic populations who inhabited the valleys of the Tigris and Eu
phrates during the historical period. Dr. Hincks proposed the name
of " Accadian" for the old language and its speakers, and Dr. Oppert
believed that he saw in it marks of relationship to the languages of
the "Turanian" or Ural-Altaic family.

It was not long before this view of the origin of the Assyrian sylla
bary appeared to find a verification, partly in the discovery of early
Babylonian inscriptions written by means of it in a non-Semitic idiom,
partly in the "bilingual texts" of Assur-bani-paPs library, in which the
words and documents of the old idiom were interpreted by interlinear
or parallel translations in Semitic Assyrian. All that remained was to
analyse the words and forms of the old language — no easy task, how
ever, when it is remembered that they are for the most part written
ideographically, and not phonetically. Dr. Oppert's first essays in this
direction were followed by an article of mine in the Journal of Philology
for 1870, in which I endeavoured to give the first fairly complete
sketch of "Accadian" grammar. Three years later this was systema-
tised and extended by the brilliant and inexhaustible pen of Fran§ois
Lenormant.

Dr. Oppert objected to the term " Accadian," which, had been
adopted from Dr. Hincks by Lenormant, Delitzsch and myself, and
proposed instead of it the term " Sumerian." From an early epoch
Chaldaea had been divided into two main divisions, called respectively
Accad and Sumer ; and the monarchs who claimed sovereignty over the
whole country entitled themselves accordingly " kings of Sumer and
Accad," in contradistinction to those who could claim to be rulers of
" the land of Accad" only.1 To Dr. Haigh belongs the credit of first
pointing out that Sumer is the Shinar of the Old Testament f while
George Smith, with his usual divinatory instinct, perceived that it
must represent southern Babylonia, Accad being the district round the
capital city of Accad, or Agade (formerly read Agane). George Smith's
views, however, were not at first adopted by other .Assyriologists, and

1 Kengi Agade, misinterpreted in later days to mean " Sumer and Accad."

2 Halevy's " Rabbinical" etymology of Shinar does not require refutation.
Already in Gen. xi. 2, the name of Shinar has been extended to denote the
whole of Babylonia, as in Daniel and Zech. v. 11, just as in Micah v. 6, the
dominion of Nimrod seems to be extended to Assyria ; but in Gen. x. 10,
the name is still confined to southern Babylonia, and is therefore used to
indicate the southern position of Calneh.

APPENDIX I. 417

it is only within the last three or four years that newly-found inscrip
tions have shown them to be correct.

The arguments by which Dr. Oppert supported his proposal were
not convincing, and for some time he secured no converts. But the
researches of Professor Paul Haupt, one of the ablest and best-trained
of the younger band of Assyriologists, threw an entirely new light on
the matter. I had noticed (in 1874) the existence of more than one
dialect in Proto-Chaldsean, and in a paper on Accadian Phonology (in
1877) had tried to show that our "Accadian" texts contain newer as
well as older forms, and that many of them are composed in a language
which exhibits all the signs of long decay ; but it was reserved for
Prof. Haupt to demonstrate scientifically that there were two clearly-
marked dialects of Accadian, and to point out the principal charac
teristics of each. He assumed that the standard dialect, that which
preserved the old language in its purest and most archaic form, wag
the dialect of Accad or northern Babylonia ; the second dialect, which
he regarded as standing to the other in the relation of a daughter or a
younger sister, being the dialect of Sumer or the south. My own view
had originally been the converse of this, but Prof. Haupt's arguments
brought me over to his side. Subsequently, however, his assumption
was attacked by Dr. Hommel; and after a considerable amount of
hesitation, I have arrived at the conviction that Dr. Hommel is right.

"The dialect" which Prof. Haupt would make Sumerian and Dr.
Hommel Accadian, exhibits the language of early Chaldsea in a decayed
and degenerated form. It is largely affected by Semitic influence;
not only has it adopted Semitic words, but Semitic idioms as well.
These Semitisms, moreover, are partly popular, partly literary in origin ;
some of them, that is, are manifestly the introductions of a learned
class who have imported them into Proto-Chaldaean much in the same
way as Greek terms have been imported into English by men of
science, or French expressions by litterateurs. Now it was in northern
Babylonia, and not in the south, that Semitic influence and Semitic
supremacy first made themselves felt. It was at Accad that the earliest
Semitic empire, that of Sargon, first grew up, and it was there that
the first Semitic library was founded under the patronage of a Semitic
monarch. Sumer continued much longer under Proto-ChaldaBan rule ;
and it is possible, if not probable, that one or more Proto-Chald&an
dialects continued to be spoken in Sumer down to the days of Nebu
chadnezzar himself.

Whether the Semitic name of Accad is derived from the Proto-Chal-
dsean Agade, or the Proto-Chaldsean Agadc from the Semitic Accad, we

2E

418 APPENDIX I.

do not know ; but it is certain that the importance of the city date*
only from the Semitic epoch of Babylonia. The name is represented
by a compound ideograph (BUR-BUR) which signifies "a mound," and
a gloss informs us that this ideograph was pronounced tilla.1 Sir
Henry Ravvlinson saw in tilla a derivative from elu, "to ascend," with
the signification of " high-lands ;" and I formerly believed that support
for this view could be found in the word Accad itself, which I con
nected with a supposed Proto-Chaldaean oka, " to lift up." But this
belief was entirely wrong. Accad has nothing to do with aJca, which
means " to love," and tilla is the common Assyrian tillu, " a tel" It
signifies the mound on which a city or temple stood, as well as the
mound formed by the debris of a ruined town. Accad was therefore
known as Tilla, either because it stood on the site of an earlier pre-
Semitic city, or because of the lofty artificial platform on which it
was built.

The compound ideograph to which the pronunciation of Tilla was
attached was applied by Sargon to the country of Ararat or Armenia.
This may have been due to a simple confusion of two geographical
names which had nothing to do with one another. In the tablet
which gives us the name of Tilla, and which appears to have been
intended to explain difficult words in texts emanating from the library
of Accad, Tilla is interpreted to mean Urdhu. Since the Euphrates
at Sippara was termed the ITrudtuv, or " river of bronze" (from the
Proto-Chaldsean urud, "bronze"2), it seems probable that Urdhu is a
Semitised form of Urud, a name which we may suppose to have been
given to Sippara or Accad and the surrounding district in consequence
of the bronze with which their edifices were adorned. The resemblance
of Urdhu to Urardhu or Ararat, the Assyrian designation of Armenia,
may have led the Assyrian king to transfer an ideograph which pro
perly denoted the north of Babylonia to the mountainous land of
Armenia.

However this may be, Dr. Hommel has, I believe, made it clear
that the texts whose primitive home can be shown to have been
Sumer are in the older and standard Proto-Chaldsean dialect, while
those which display a later and more Semitised phase of the language
belong primarily to Accad. At the same time, it must not be forgotten
that the priests of Accad not unfrequently attempted to write in the
archaic and revered language of Sumer ; while, on the other hand, texts
which originated in Sumer have undergone such extensive modifi-

1 W. A. I. ii. 48, 13. 2 W. A. I. ii. 48, 47.

APPENDIX I. 419

cations by repeated revision as to be overlaid with the characteristics
of the northern dialect. It is also not impossible that changes similar
to those undergone by the old language in Accad may at a later time
have overtaken the dialect of the south, so that phonetic peculiarities,
which seem to us to belong to Accad, may really belong to the lan
guage of Sumer in a later stage of decay.

I must here diverge for a moment in order to emphasise the fact
that very few of the earlier texts of Sumer and Accad have come down
to us in their original form. With the exception of the contempo
raneous inscriptions of the kings of Tel-loh or Mugheir, and .perhaps
also of the hymns to the Sun-god of Sippara, which were composed in
literary " Accadian" at a time when the old language had long become
extinct, the earlier literature of Chalda3a has been subjected to altera
tions and modifications of the most extensive kind. Documents of
different age and origin have been pieced together ; words, lines, and
even whole passages have been freely interpolated ; glosses have crept
into the text from the margin ; the language has been modernised again
and again ; and the errors of copyists, intentional or unconscious, have
made their way into the text. The corruption of the text has been
further increased by the imperfect acquaintance of many of the later
editors with the pre-Semitic dialects of Chaldaea. This has been a
frequent cause of error, and in one case at least has resulted in maca
ronic verses, the Semitic portion of which has no real connection with
the Sumerian.1 It is true that the scribes were assisted in under
standing the earlier texts by commentaries, in which explanations
were given of the more difficult words and ideographs ; but the expla
nations of the commentators were not always correct, while the com
mentaries or so-called "bilingual lists" have themselves suffered from
the mistakes and ignorance of later editors. The scrupulous care with
which the scribes of Assur-bani-pal copied the tablets brought from
Babylonia, noting the places where there was " a lacuna" (khibi) or
"a recent lacuna" (khibi essu\ giving alternative characters where the
scribe was uncertain as to the Assyrian character to which the Baby
lonian original corresponded, and at times frankly confessing the
inability of the copyist to understand his copy (ul idi, " I do not
know"), was a growth of comparatively modern date. The Babylonian
scribes may have shown the same carefulness for a few centuries before
the age of Assur-bani-pal, and efforts may have been made to secure
the accurate reproduction of the religious texts as soon as they acquired

1 See above, p. 80.

2E2

420 APPENDIX I.

a sacred character ; but for at least two thousand years after the era of
Sargon of Accad all the causes of corruption above enumerated were
freely at work, and it was just during this period that the larger part
of the Babylonian literature we possess assumed its present form. The
only wonder is that the non-Semitic portion of it should have been
handed down as correctly as it is. It was probably in the time of
Khamnraragas (B.C. 2300) that the main bulk of it came into exist
ence. There seems to have been a literary revival at that period, not
unlike the literary revival in Wales in the 12th and 13th centuries.
A considerable number of the older commentaries were probably
composed at the time ; at all events, the Epic of Gisdhubar and other
similar works are in all likelihood to be referred to this date. Under
Khammuragas, Babylon became the dominant state in Babylonia, and
absorbed the older fame of the Semitic empire at Accad and Sippara ;
hence it is that the list of Babylonian dynasties begins with the
dynasty of Khammuragas, and that while the antediluvian kings of
Berossos belong for the most part to Larankha or Surippak, the near
neighbour of Accad, the first of them, Aloros, is made a native of
Babylon.

But behind the Semitic legends of Accad and Babylon, as may be
seen from the foregoing Lectures, lie older non-Semitic legends which
speak of the origin of culture and civilisation in Chalda3a. These
legends describe it as beginning on the shores of the Persian Gulf and
working its way to the cities of the north. This is in complete harmony
with what we have found to be the evidence of the native inscriptions.
Eridu, the primaeval capital of the south, was the first home of the
god of culture and healing, and it is with Eridu and its deities that the
oldest religious texts are intimately associated. As these texts are in
the standard dialect, it would follow that Dr. Hornmel is right in
regarding it as the dialect of Sumer.

But yet more. The cuneiform system of writing was at the outset
pictorial, and its earliest documents would therefore be mainly written
with ideographs, and not with phonetic signs. Now this is one of the
peculiarities which distinguish the texts of the standard dialect from
those composed in the second dialect, and consequently justifies us in
assigning them to Eridu and the surrounding district. If once we
assume that the standard dialect is that of Sumer, and the secondary
dialect that of Accad, everything falls naturally into its place.

The so-called "bilingual lists" sometimes qualify a word or form
belonging to the secondary or Accadian dialect by a couple of ideographs
which literally mean " the language of woman." This " woman's Ian-

APPENDIX I. 421

guage" has been supposed to have a grammatical reference, denoting
perhaps what we should call a " weak form ;" but though grammatical
terms were certainly used by the compilers of the lists, it is only those
of a more obvious character, such as "singular" and "plural," "mas
culine" and "feminine;" and I pre-fer to see in the expression, "woman's
language," a reference- to one of those numerous cases in which the
language of the women and the nursery is distinguished from that of the
men. In northern Babylonia, where Semites and non-Semites inter
mingled from an early period, there would have been reasons in plenty
for such an appellation. Semitic wives would not have spoken Surne-
i-ian with the same purity as their non-Semitic husbands ; while, on the
other hand, the dialect of the Sumerian wife would have been regarded
by her Semitic husband as essentially a feminine idiom.1

That more than one dialect prevailed in Ch